10-year-old Mikaila Ulmer from Texas is building a lemonade（柠檬水）empire, hoping to save honey bees in the process.

It all started when Mikaila was 4 years old and she was bitten by a bee twice in one week. This caused her to become very scared whenever bees were near. In order to help her manage this new fear, Mikaila’s parents asked her to do some research on bees. She learned that bees are quite important for flowers, gardens and trees. She also learned that they are dying at a rapid rate. In the past year, honeybee farmers have reported losing nearly 42% of them. Many believe that this could be due to the overuse of pesticides（杀虫剂）.

This is when she set her mind to create a product to help save bees. She started her company BeeSweet Lemonade. Her special lemonade recipe came from her great-grandmother’s cookbook. She adds honey to it, instead of sugar. In order to call attention to the problems honeybees face, Mikaila sells lemonade almost every day at her lemonade stand. And she takes every opportunity to tell her customers about the problems that face honeybees.

What began as a small activity is starting to grow. BeeSweet is projected to sell almost 140,000 bottles of lemonade this year. BeeSweet lemonade can be found on the shelves at select Whole Foods Markets as well as many restaurants and other locations near her home.

Does Mikaila have any time to just be a kid? Sure! Every weekend Mikaila does something fun. She doesn’t mind the hard work though. She says that she is happy watching people enjoy her lemonade. The more people enjoy it, the more they’re learning about the bees.

I was sitting at my desk when another graduate student in my lab approached me. “Can you help?” he asked. His experiment wasn’t working and he desperately needed help. I was then a fifth year PhD student, and I took pride in being the senior member of the lab, whom everyone looked up to. But that also meant I was the one everyone turned to for help - which ate away hours, days, and sometimes weeks that I could have spent on my own research.

There were many reasons I had a hard time saying no to such pleas(恳求). I was new to the United States for graduate school. I found it difficult to make new friends and discover activities I enjoyed. So I spent a huge chunk of my time in the lab, with my lab-mates serving as my primary source of social connection. I feared that if I brushed them off, I’d lose their favor.

But the extra responsibilities came at a cost. I had to work extra hours to catch up with my own work, and I often made sacrifices to my personal life.

It wasn’t until my wife gave birth to our first child that I realized how thin I had stretched myself, and how misguided my priorities were. While she lay in a hospital bed in the early stages of labor, I sat nearby hunched(伏首前倾的)over my laptop finishing up a work report hours later, after hearing my daughter’s first cry and watching her tiny fingers grab tightly onto mine, it dawned on me: I should have been fully present during my daughter’s birth. I was clearly spending too much time working if my job had intruded(侵入)into one of the most precious moments of my life.

From then on, I decided to spend more time with my family by paring down my work tasks and carefully considering each request for help. I still enjoyed collaborating with others, but I prioritized mutually beneficial tasks or those my manager asked me to take on, rather than accepting everything that came my way.

I noticed many benefits: no longer working overtime, more family time, and improved work performance. I was also pleased to discover that “Sorry, I’d love to help but I have a deadline coming up” is an acceptable response to a request for assistance.

It’s hard to say “no” to those you work with. But I’ve learned that sometimes that’s the best course of action to avoid an excessive workload and lead a freer and happier life.

My mother, Marisol Torres, came with her family to Australia in the early 1960s. Then my parents’ marriage ended and Mum began the study of precious stones. Her interest in opals (猫眼石) took her to the New South Wales remote town of Lightning Ridge. There were no luxuries (奢华的享受), but she was closer to nature and had a chance to find black opals and make some money.

My mother was beautiful with dark hair and brown eyes, but she was also quiet and shy. Early in the Ridge years, she kept to herself, but later, she started going to the neighbourhood centre to make friends.

It was her dream to mine, but her get-rich-quick thinking was unrealistic. She was cheated and she was never very successful. But she kept a sense of humour and a charming smile.

Then, just as friendships began to blossom, she was diagnosed with cancer and had to return south for treatment. She had the intention of cooking Spanish food as special treat for her Ridge friends, but died too soon. In her honour, my aunt, Marisa, and I fulfilled (实现) her desire when we visited the Ridge in March last year.

People who mine (采矿) the Ridge come from a cross section of society, from lawyers to travels. Looks don’t mean much: it can be hard to tell who is millionaire and who is poor. Opals attracted Sebastian and Hanna Deisenberger to Lightning Ridge. They planned a two-year stay, but became permanent residents.

Then there’s Neil Schellnegger, 45, who moved to the area with his parents when he was a child. He lives with his son, Luke. Luke is a shy 19-year-old boy who enjoys helping his dad. They haven’t had much luck over the past couple of years, but their passion for opals conquers disappointment. They love the peaceful lifestyle.

Danny Hatcher, 38, is a second-generation miner and president of the Lightning Ridge Miners’ Association. He is an optimistic man, driven by the desire to find the perfect opal. “It’s magic,” he explains. “Once you start opal mining you don’t want to do anything else… There is always the potential for finding a million dollars. Nothing beats it.”

It’s a place where dreams—spiritual or material—can be fulfilled; a place, for one last bet in life.