Susannah was a shy but clever girl. She had worn glasses for as long as she could remember. And again, for as long as she could remember, some of her classmates had habitually picked on her.

The worst thing was that Lewis called her “Four Eyes”. She acted like she didn’t mind, but in fact Susannah couldn’t stand it

One day, the class went on a school outing to visit some famous caves. The children were walking towards the caves, while Lewis slipped. While falling, he grabbed onto Susannah, who walked next to him, and both fell down the hole.

They landed in a dark cave. All that could be seen was a single ray of light coming from the cave roof, many metres above, and some tree roots and trunks which had fallen through the hole. Susannah and Lewis shouted for help, but no one came.

The next morning they still hadn’t been found and Lewis continued shouting for help, but no response and he started feeling scared.

It must have been noontime, because Susannah noticed that the ray of light just landed on the floor in front of her. Quickly, she took a piece of wood that had fallen into the cave, and, using her glasses as a magnifying (放大) glass, she focused the ray of light onto the wood until a little flame sprang up. Now they had a torch(火把) . Lewis watched with surprise and excitement and then they went to explore the cave.

It took them some time, and they had to burn quite a few torches, but finally they found a way out. Amid (在其中) hugs and cries of relief, Lewis gave Susannah his heartfelt thanks.

“A house without books is like a room without windows,” wrote Horace Mann, the 18th-century writer. I agree wholeheartedly with Mann. 【小题1】

Recently, my husband and I did a painting project in a room we use as an office, which has a beautiful wall full of built-in bookshelves. As we started to pull my valuable books down off the shelves, I felt like I was pulling plants out of the garden. 【小题2】 But then I recognized what the project would offer — the opportunity to rethink our book collection.

The physical act of removing every book from its spot on the shelf showed a few unexpected insights (见解). 【小题3】 At the same time, there were a number of inviting surprises on the shelves — books I had forgotten were waiting for me to open them. So the painting job led to a parallel (并行的) project of organizing the bookshelves.

I took the opportunity and started by grouping the books. Then I thought about the layout of the books on the shelves. 【小题4】 I arranged (布置) a vase here, a figurine (小雕像), there, and a piece of my son’s school art there, each in its place as a symbol of aspects of my life I love as much as I treasure my books.

【小题5】 But it can also be an enjoyable experience if you spend the next rainy afternoon inside in search of something new. You can try pulling your books off the shelf, pay a visit to each one and think in a fresh way about how and where they might live their best lives.

We might choose a career based on the opportunities for travel, but when we reach the future and know more and better years later, we will look back and regret all our time spent far away from home. As almost every choice has a certain bad aspect or another, both a choice and its opposite can each have disadvantages that can make us seem obviously regrettable. Regret is unavoidable for almost all of us, but we should not ignore it. For regret has something to teach us, the avoidance of regret may be a good goal itself—even if it is a goal that we can never reach.

To understand why, it is helpful to look at psychological(心理学的) studies of the conditions under which we actually feel regret. Among them, two of the results are especially noticeable.

The first is the difference between action and inaction. In the short run, we tend to regret the things we do. This is the uncomfortable feeling we get immediately after realising we have chosen to leave from a wrong place or made a careless comment. But, in the long term, it is the things that we don’t do that we most regret. At the top of our most common regrets are not having the advantage of a higher education and not spending enough time with friends and family. It is our inactions, rather than our actions, that we most regret.

The second is that our regrets arise most often from the difference between our actual and future selves. Regret tends to be driven by our failures to live up to our own ambition. It is our own expectations for ourselves that are the most important sources of regret.

The advice to avoid regret is advice that we cannot fully follow. Regret is unavoidable. However, it may be a good piece of advice, for it encourages us to take action following our own goals rather than others’ expectations.