My smartphone gave me access to music, information and videos. I would repeatedly refresh my email, shop online and look through the latest bad news. I’d often complain. I felt trapped by it. 【小题1】 I bought a phone with no touch screen. I can’t get access to social media. The benefits are fantastic.

I am more connected in my relationships.

Earlier, while texting with a friend who had moved, I finally got frustrated (懊丧的) and called her. I realized I hadn’t spoken to her since her move. 【小题2】 I learned that when people connected voice to voice, they felt more bonded.

I consume news on my own.

【小题3】 But that didn’t happen. Instead of spending hours sifting (筛) through feeds, I use my laptop to selectively visit a handful of news sources. With the saved time, I’m reading more books. I realized being “in touch” with society doesn’t require constant monitoring of the Internet.

【小题4】

During the lock-downs, I filled boredom by visiting stores sending newsletters to my email. I found myself repeating lines from department store copywriters. Every time I clicked “buy”, I’d get a dopamine (多巴胺) hit. Now I’m online about 10 times less, I’m more thoughtful about what I need and I’ve had the time to take up knitting and needling—making what I once would have “added to cart”.

I am calmer.

When I first quit using my phone, I’d search for it at times. I went through withdrawals. Thankfully, that sense of dependence is false. I’ve found you can find other ways to do all the things. 【小题5】

When I was so small that my head barely touched the windowsill, we lived in the ever-green forests of Vermont. Our home was far, far away from any town or city, but that was the way we liked it.

Some winters, it got so cold that the river would freeze, which was unusual for water like that, water which ran so fast and deep. It felt as though time had stopped near the river, and so it had decided to become solid, settling in to wait for spring. We liked to skate on that river, my grandfather and I, even though the ice was uneven and his brown leather skates was so old.

One night, in the most frigid winter my young mind could recall, long after I should have been asleep, I caught my grandfather sneaking out of the front door, his ancient leather skates in his hands. He looked sheepish when he saw me, like I had caught him doing something silly, but I was so young that I thought no adult could ever do wrong. Especially not my grandfather, because he was the model of wisdom in my eyes.

“Grandpa, where are you going?” I asked.

“Skating on the river.”

“Why would you go out now? We did that yesterday morning.”

He looked a little thoughtful, and then he said: “It’s just that when you go out there, on the coldest, stillest night of the year, and you lie on your back on the thick, bubbled river ice, you can hear them.”

“Hear who?”

“The fish. Trapped there under the ice. You can hear them singing their water y winter song. And if you hold your breath, you can almost hear the stars singing in harmony.”

You are enrolled in a full-time school called “life”. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Why are you here? What is your purpose? Humans have sought to discover the meaning of life for a very long time. What we and our ancestors have overlooked, however, is that there is no one answer. The meaning of life is different for every individual.

Each person has his or her own purpose and distinct path, unique and separate from anyone else’s. As you travel your life path, you will be presented with numerous lessons that you will need to learn in order to fulfill that purpose. The lessons you are presented with are specific to you; learning these lessons is the key to discovering and fulfilling the meaning and connection of your own life.

As you travel through your lifetime, you may encounter challenging lessons that others don’t have to face, while other spend years struggling with challenges that you don’t need to deal with. You may never know why you are blessed with a wonderful marriage, while your friends suffer through bitter arguments and painful divorces, just as you cannot be sure why you struggle financially while your peers enjoy abundance. The only thing you can count on for certain is that you will be presented with all the lessons that you specifically need to learn; whether you choose to learn them or not is entirely up to you.

The challenge here, therefore, is to align (公开支持，使一致) yourself with your own unique path by learning individual lessons. This is one of the most difficult challenges you will be faced with in your lifetime, as sometimes your path will be completely different from others’. But, remember, don’t compare your path to the people around you and focus on the difference between their lessons and yours. You need to remember that you will only be faced with lessons that you are capable of learning and are specific to your own growth.

Our sense of fairness is the expectation of equality — the assumption that all things are equal and justice will always prevail (盛行). Life is not, in fact, fair, and you may indeed have a more difficult life path than others around you, deserved or not. Everyone’s circumstances are unique, and everyone needs to handle his or her own circumstances differently. If you want to move toward calm, you will be required to move out of the complaining phase of “it’s not fair”. Focusing on the unfairness of circumstances keeps you comparing yourself with others rather than appreciating your own special uniqueness. You miss out on learning your individual lessons by distracting yourself with feelings of bitterness and anger.