I skipped school for the first time when I was 16. It was easily done: Both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived, so when it showed up, I simply didn’t get on. The perfect crime.

And what did I do with myself on that stolen day, with no limits on my activities? Did I get high? No! I built a fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, covered myself with a blanket and read. I was thrilled and transported by Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I was eager to know what would happen to Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn.

I spent that day lost in words. Time passed, and my role (as a daughter, sister, teenager, student) in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally found the key to happiness: I had become completely absorbed by something I loved.

Looking back on it now, I see that Hemingway’s language was quietly getting into my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot (情节). In other words, I was learning how to write. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did.

Unluckily, I was caught that day. The teacher called my mom, and my mom called home, and I answered the phone. It’s obvious that I am not cut out for a life of crime. I got into big trouble. Nobody believed me that I skipped school simply to read.

I am writing this essay over 30 years later. Once again I am sitting alone in a quiet house, next to a fire, absorbed by language. I am as happy at this moment as I was on that day in 1988. I have once tried many other things to make myself happy but nothing works better. I cannot be more genuinely myself than I am right now.

On May 15, 2013, Sarah and David Brown heard the words every parent dreads: Their newborn wasn’t going to make it. Their twins—a girl and a boy—were born two minutes apart and 13 weeks premature, weighing just over two pounds each. Doctors had tried to save the boy for 20 minutes but saw no improvement. His heartbeat was nearly gone, and he’d stopped . breathing. The baby had just moments to live.

“I saw him gasp, but the doctor said it was no use, ” Sarah said. “I know it sounds stupid, but if he was still gasping, that was a sign of life. I wasn’t going to give up easily. ” Still, the couple knew this was likely goodbye. In an effort to cherish her last minutes with the tiny boy, Sarah asked to hold him. “I wanted to meet him, and for him to know us, ” Sarah told the Daily Mail five years later. “We’d resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to lose him, and we were just trying to make the most of those last, precious moments. ”

Sarah unwrapped the boy, whom the couple had already named Jamie, from his hospital blanket and ordered David to take his shirt off and join the boy and the girl in bed. The first-time parents wanted their son to be as warm as possible and hoped the skin-to-skin contact would improve his condition. They also talked to him.

“We were trying to make him stay, ” Sarah said. “We explained his name and that he had a twin that he had to look out for and how hard we had tried to have him. ” Then something miraculous happened. Jamie gasped again—and then he started breathing. Finally, he reached for his father’s finger.

Eight years later, Jamie and his sister, Emily, are happy and healthy. The Browns only recently told the kids the story of their birth. “Emily burst into tears, ” Sarah said. “She kept hugging Jamie. This whole experience makes you cherish them more. ”

2012 was one of the hardest years I have ever known. For several months, I found it hard to write, think, eat or take pleasure in anything; I could not imagine what it would be like to feel happy again; I could not find any hope or purpose.

I cannot remember the reason why one Monday morning I decided to go to a hot yoga studio in east London, where I signed up for a 30-day trial. I do not remember the class or how much I sweated. What I do know is that I started going to hot yoga every day. Sometimes, when my head felt as if it might collapse（崩溃）, I went twice a day. I skipped parties, left social events and got up early to attend. There was something about the hot room that held me together and that stopped all the dark thoughts inside my mind.

I chose the Bikram method of hot yoga: It has a set of 26 postures and two breathing exercises performed in heat over a period of 90 minutes. This form of yoga was founded by Bikram Choudhury. In 2015, he failed in an attempt to copyright（取得版权）his method. Many practitioners（从业人员）believe that Bikram is not real yoga. Some question the limitations of just 26 postures. Others wonder why the class has to be performed before a wall of mirrors. However, something in those 26 postures freed my mind, dragged me out of my thoughts and back into the present. I was able to focus on how my body behaved differently each day.