Recently, I was in San Diego and decided to take my two children down to the beach one day. One morning, as we were walking toward the ocean, we saw a group of surfers marching with intention. They stood on a board, riding a wave of water, which seemed like nothing short of magic. 【小题1】

I couldn’t help stopping them during the break and asking, “What is the key to being a good surfer?” Their response taught me that riding the waves of the ocean on a surfboard is a lot like riding the waves of life. According to them, the first thing is that you have to get the right board. 【小题2】 There are different levels of the boards and all the choices should be made based on your size, level of experience and goals.

Then one of the guys said, “Next, it’s the ability to pop back up.” The moment a wave hits you, if you don’t pop back up and balance yourself, you won’t get the chance to ride the next wave. 【小题3】 However, it’s about popping back up quickly after you’ve been knocked off your board.

【小题4】 Together with other surfers, you can get feedback about what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. While you’re struggling, you can observe what other surfers are doing.

【小题5】   When you’re struggling to stay on the board in the waves of life, they can repeatedly knock you down. If you observe and learn from others’ successes, you will gain more opportunities of standing up and marching on.

Being perfect is something many of us want and try to achieve. It makes us feel we’re correct and that our hard work has paid off. However, as much as perfection and being perfect is not all a perfect thing.

Perfection is all about being without mistakes and criticism. Wanting or trying to be perfect can make it hard to admit a mistake. Nevertheless, it is important to own up to mistakes and work to fix them. Not being able to take criticism and fix mistakes is arrogance, not perfection.

Perfection is a double-edged sword. In our lives, we want perfection. Perfection holds us accountable; it’s the mistakes and imperfection that keeps pushing us harder and further at what we do. It’s the perfect motivator. But it’s also the perfect killer. For example, the movie “Black Swan” showcased how perfection can kill us. Working and training and stress hurt our body, mind, and so much more that we can’t do it any more.

But perfection can also have the opposite effect. The movie “High Strung” showed that perfection doesn’t exist, but practicing and pushing ourselves can bring us great rewards. In “Black Swan,” the main character tried to be perfect but he also compared himself to someone else who he thought was better than him. This added more pressure and self-doubt, which can cause unhealthy ways of achieving perfection. The main character of “Black Swan” didn’t know when to stop, whereas the main character of “High Strung” did, or at least didn’t focus so much on the comparison, and instead focused on the competition and the ones she cared about.

Perfection is something we can’t live without and can’t live with. The only way to keep the sword from cutting us is if we know when to stop. Some days are going to be good days and others will be bad. We have to take whatever day it is — perfect or imperfect — and hope that’s enough.

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When he was a little boy, his uncle called him "Sparky' after a comic-strip   (连环画)   horse named Spark Plug. School was all but impossible for Sparky. He failed every subject in the eighth grade. And while he did manage to make the school's golf team, he lost the only match of   the season straight away.

Throughout his youth, Sparky was awkward socially. It wasn't that the other students dislike him. It's just that no one really cared that much. In fact, Sparky was astonished if a classmate ever said hello to him outside of school hours. Sparky was a loser. Him, his classmates ... everyone knew it. So he learned to live with it. He made up his mind early that if things were meant to work out, they would.

One thing was important to Sparky, however-drawing. He was proud of his artwork. No one else appreciated it. But that didn't seem to matter to him. In his senior year of high school, he sent some cartoons to the yearbook. The editors rejected his ideas. Despite that, Sparky was convinced of his ability.

He even decided to become an artist. So, after completing high school, Sparky wrote to Walt Disney Studios. They asked for samples of his artwork. In spite of careful preparation, it too was rejected. One more confirmation was that he was a loser.

But Sparky still didn't give up. Instead, he decided to tell his own life story in cartoons. The main character would be a little boy who symbolized the boy who always lost and underachieved. You know him well because Sparky's cartoon character went on to become a kind of cultural phenomenon. People readily understand this "loveable loser". He reminded people of the painful and embarrassing moments from their own past, of their pain and shared humanity. The character soon became famous worldwide: "Charlie Brown". And Sparky, the boy whose many failures kept him from trying, whose work was rejected again and again, is the highly successful cartoonist Charles Schultz. His cartoon strip Peanuts continues to inspire books, T-shirts and Christmas specials, reminding us, as someone once commented, that life somehow finds a way for all of us, even the losers.