A woman professor was giving a lesson to her students on stress management. As she raised a glass of water, everyone in the class_______they would be asked the “half-empty or half-full” question.

_______, with a smile on her face, she asked the students, “How_______ do you think this glass of water weighs?”

Answers called out _______from 100g to 300g. She quieted the students down and then replied, “It does not matter on the_______. It _______on how long you hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it is OK. If I hold it for an hour, I will have an ache in my right_______. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb. In each case, the weight of the glass of water doesn’t change, but the_______I hold it, the heavier it becomes. Why?“

Lost in_______, all the students kept silent and listened to the professor carefully.

“Our________ and worries in life are like that glass of water. If we________our burdens (负担) all the time, sooner or later, we will feel exhausted.”

What you have to do is put all your burdens down, as________ in the evening as possible. Don’t carry them through the evening into the night; by doing this, we can get ________next morning and are able to move forward.”

“More often than not, life gets terrible when we think too much. And the moment you________your burdens, you’ll find yourself feeling so much more relaxed.”

“So rather than feeling________ and sorry for yourself, start doing something about it. After all, life is too short to waste on anything that is not making you happy.”

My father and I disagreed about curfew (晚间回家的时间). I told him it made me ______ like a junior - high kid. He explained that ______ a curfew might sound like a restriction (限制), it’s really about people looking out for one another.

The very next Friday after that pretty heated ______, my dad and I had tickets to see our town’s professional football game. On that day he was ______ to a nearby city to meet with some major clients (客户) and ______ me that his getting home and our leaving for the game would be tight (紧的). So I got everything prepared ______. But nearly an hour passed, I was getting a little ______. We were going to miss the kick-off! And why hadn’t he ______ me and let me know he was going to be really late? Then another half hour passed. Now we were going to ______ the whole game! Another half hour passed, my anger turned to ______. What if something terrible had happened to my dad? And I began to really worry.

Finally, the phone rang, and my dad said ______, “Son, I’m so sorry, but… there was a terrible accident… on the freeway, and I ______ to help...and ______ going to the hospital. I left my cellphone in the car…”

I was so ______ to hear that he was safe that I actually cried. That was when I got the importance of a curfew: Checking in! It’s about knowing that someone you love is ______. It was one more proof (证明) of my father’s loving me as much as he does.

When I mentioned this incident to his teacher and ________ what caused the changes, she said laughing. “It ________ be his coat!” Another teacher told him she was giving him a good ________ not only because he had earned ________ but because she liked his coat. At the library, we ran into a friend “Could this be John?” he asked surprisingly, ________ John’s new height, assessing the cut of his coat and extending his hand, one gentleman to another. 

John and I both know we should never ________a person’s clothes for the real person within them. ________ there is something to be said for wearing a standard of excellence for the world to see and for ________ what is on the inside to what is on the outside. 

For John it is a time when it is as easy to try on different approaches to ________ as it is to try on a coat. The whole world, the whole future is stretched out ahead, a vast landscape ________ all the doors are open. And he could picture himself walking through those doors wearing his wonderful, magical coat.