Most of us want to be a person of courage. We often think only a few people can truly practice it, but each day offers us a chance, and each one of us should grasp that chance to be courageous. 【小题1】 Without courage, we can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

【小题2】 To stand up against the opposition even when you are the only one. To do what is right even if the consequences are severe.

Courage is what an ordinary woman, Rosa Parks, displayed in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her courage and her arrest that followed launched the Montgomery bus boycott and became a historical moment in the civil rights movement. 【小题3】

For example. I will never forget the courage of a young mother I prayed with in the hospital. She was battling terminal cancer and refused to give up for the sake of her small children. She fought hard until the end. Or, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York, my friend, a nurse who pushed through her fears to care for the infected. 【小题4】 And then there was the small business owner I knew who became depressed and had a hard time managing his business. But every day he found the courage to get up from his bed, pray and read his handwritten note listing all the good things in his life.

Author Mary Anne Rademacher writes, “【小题5】 Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saving. ‘I will try again tomorrow,’” When all is said and done, each of us can be a person of courage—now more than ever.

Sometimes I really doubt whether there is love between my parents. Every day they are very busy trying to make money for my schooling.

One day, my mother was sewing a quilt. I silently sat beside her.

“Mum, is there love between you and Dad?” I asked in a very low voice.

With surprise in her eyes, she stopped her work for a while. Then she said, “Susan, look at this thread. It can hardly be seen, but it’s really there. It makes the quilt strong. If life is a quilt, love should be a thread. Love is inside.”

I couldn’t understand her until the next spring. At that time, my father suddenly got sick seriously. My mother had to stay with him in the hospital for a month.

After they were back, my mother helped my father walk slowly on the country road every day. They were so kind to each other and it seemed they were the happiest couple.

After two months my father still couldn’t walk by himself.

“Dad, how are you feeling now?” I asked him one day.

“Susan, don’t worry about me.” he said. “I just like walking with your mum. I like this kind of life.” Reading his eyes, I knew he loves my mother deeply.

Now I understand that love is just a thread in the quilt of our life. Love is inside, making life strong and warm.

They talk about the straw that broke the camel’s back, but really it should be the password that wiped out my memory bank.

I was going along fine with instant recall of my bank PIN, my mobile phone number and the date of my cousin’s birthday before I downloaded a gas station payment app for its new customer discount. It asked me to create a password. When I typed in “gas l”, it was rejected for not being complex enough. I tried again: “IHateHearlessOilCompanies@”.But that was too long and didn’t include “at least one number”. But here is the thing: as soon as I added the fresh password into my memory, I instantly forgot all the others. My brain had hit its limit for passwords. I now know nothing.

I had entered some passwords in a notebook. Of course, I didn’t write down the actual passwords, in case it fell into the wrong hands. Instead, I masked them in a way that only a family member could figure them out. For example, I combined my bank PIN with our postal code, then added it to a list of phone numbers. It would fool even Albert Einstein.

Maybe we need a system like the one we use to remember people’s names. You know, you form an association between a person’s characteristics and their name by whispering “Skinny George. Skinny George” in heart after meeting them. The risk is that, upon seeing him, you’ll burst out the phrase. “Skinny George” might not mind, but it’s possible “Boring Betty” will. As for remembering passwords as you change them, you could simply use the first and last letters of your favorite singer’s greatest hits, together with the year of their release.

Maybe I’ll try that one out, but only after describing the system in the notebook. Then I’ll hide it in a place so secret that I’ll never remember where it is.