Approaching 96, at an age when most are lonely and in poor health, Olga Murray, full of energy, has been eagerly planning a trip to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, while keeping in touch with hundreds of friends around the world. How can she be in such good shape? You may wonder. Is it her good genes? (Her mother lived to 98.) Her daily salads and three-times-a-week workouts? Or might it have something to do with the retired lawyer's second career as founder of a nonprofit organization?

Scientists increasingly are finding that the answer — call it living with purpose, finding meaning in life or just engaging with something larger than yourself — can be a particularly healthy pursuit. Living with a sense of purpose can improve the quality of those final years. Murray offers a vivid example of how to create a sense of meaning.

Murray's story began in 1984, after she had worked 37 years as a lawyer and was starting to think about retirement (退休). At 59, while traveling in Nepal, Murray found herself amazed by the children there.“They were poor beyond anything I had ever experienced,”she recalled in a self-published memoir (自传) years later.“Yet they were the most joyful little kids anywhere on earth.”She wanted to devote the rest of her life to helping educate Nepalese children.

Returning to Nepal the next year, she met Allan Aistrope, then a volunteer English teacher at the country's only orphanage (孤儿院). The two combined forces, beginning with organizing college scholarships for four of the orphans. After another five years, they had launched the Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF), which by then was supporting several hundred scholarship students and raising 60 homeless children. In 1994, the two hired Som Paneru, a former scholarship student, as executive director. Murray has taken several steps to make sure the NYF will survive after the unavoidable loss of her presence. She ceded (转让) the presidency to Paneru in 2012. Now, she is busy as usual, leading lots of fundraising campaigns (筹款活动).

Mr. Robert was a famous writer in an old town, and he had lots of friends from all over the town. One day, Robert invited his friend Tom and Tom’s brother Jack to the dinner at his home. Tom never went to school so he was worried that he would say unsuitable words in the dinner party. But his brother Jack told him, “don’t worry, Tom. Just do everything like me, and don’t talk about anything if you don’t understand it.”

Everything went on quite well. But by the end of the evening, Tom had had a lot of drink, and he was drunken. A man asked him if he liked literature, and Tom answered, “it’s delicious, but I like beer better.” All the people in the room laughed and soon they began to leave.

When the two brothers were out of the house, Jack said to Tom, “You certainly made yourself a fool because you are empty-headed (无知的).” “What do you mean?” asked Tom. “We all know that literature isn’t a kind of drink,” Jack answered. “It’s a kind of food.”

The bus was full of the sounds of laughing and yelling fifth graders. They were on their way to the zoo for a class trip. Mario was excited to see the zoo, but there was one problem. It was ten o'clock in the morning, but his stomach was already grumbling (咕咕叫). He reached down and grabbed his lunch bag. Opening it, he saw that it contained a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an orange, and two cookies. Mario sighed. He always had peanut butter and jelly.

“Trade you lunches, ”he said to the boy seated next to him on the bus.

“Okay, ” said Mark as he handed his brown bag to Mario.

Mario opened it and was hit with the smell of tuna. Mario wrinkled his nose and quickly closed the bag. He leaned forward and tapped the shoulder of the girl in front of him. “Swap lunches, Toni? ”he asked.

“Hmm, okay, ”said Toni.

Mario smiled. This was fun. But when he looked into the bag, he frowned. What a disappointment！A ham sandwich, but no cookies！He had to have cookies.

Mario turned in his seat. “Want to trade lunches?” he asked Juana.

“Definitely！” said Juana. She grabbed his lunch and tossed hers onto his lap.

He opened the lunch bag. Pizza！He reached into the bag to grab it. Oh, no！The pizza was hard.

He could hit a home run with pizza that hard.

Mario twisted in his seat. One last try, he told himself. “Hey, Mona！Trade lunches?”Three rows behind him, Mona seemed hesitant: Finally, she nodded. She passed her lunch forward, and he passed his back.

Mario took a deep breath and opened the bag. It was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an orange, and two cookies. The sandwich was a little squashed(挤压), and one of the cookies was broken.

Mario ate it anyway. And it was delicious.