My wife and I usually don't keep houseplants. Anything in pots gets either over watered or underwatered. After my diagnosis with glioblastoma—a terminal brain cancer with a prognosis of little more than a year to live—I loved the idea of having something green and alive around us. When my friend Mitch gave me what he said was a lucky bamboo plant in a deep-green pottery bowl, we decided to place the plant in the living room window across from the couch where I spent much of each day.

I told my wife I wanted to care for the plant myself. When it didn't immediately turn yellow or brown or lose all its leaves, I was pleasantly surprised. Tending the plant gave me a sense of accomplishment at a time when I sometimes felt useless. Glioblastoma limited my ability to walk, and the treatment left me fatigued, making it hard for me to accomplish everyday tasks.

As a physician, I was used to being the one who provided care, not the one who received t Since my diagnosis in August 2018, far too often, I had to rely on help from other people. The enormous change left me feeling adrift. Watering the plant, as small an act as it was, connected me to a core part of my old identity and taught me I could still be a caregiver. Plants and people could still depend on me. Soon, it had nearly doubled in height and its leaves were shiny and lush. Both the tree and I were thriving.

Then, mysteriously, it began to show signs of stress. I increased my plant watering, then decreased it. I fed it commercial plant food. No matter what I did, the leaves kept browning and dropping to the floor. “I can't even care for a simple plant!” I yelled. “I'm failing!”

My wife reminded me that we'd seen houseplants die before. She asked me why I was getting so worked up about this particular one. I couldn't shake the feeling that the plant had become a symbol of my own vulnerable health. Identifying with the green and growing plant had offered me solace. Its shriveling leaves, I worried, might signal the recurrence of my brain tumor.

I realized I had wrongly connected my careful nurturing of the plant-something over which I had at least some control—with my own survival-something over which I had no control. When my tumor inevitably returned, it would not be because of any failure on my part—not because I didn't atomize essential oils in my of ice, not because I ate sugar occasionally and certainly not because I failed to keep this plant alive.

As my anxiety lessened, I began to examine online tutorials to help me figure out how to care for my failing plant. Following the instructions, I transplanted the tree to a larger pot, untangling its roots to give it room to grow. When it was back in the sunny window, we both began to thrive again.

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.

A few years ago, a friend sent me a restaurant gift card for Christmas, and I picked a pretty, sunny Sunday afternoon to use it. It felt good taking my two grown sons and daughter to a nice sit-down restaurant instead of the fast food places we usually ate at. The meal was delicious, and we all had a good time just being together. The gift card covered almost all of the check. I reached into my wallet to get enough cash to cover the rest. I saw two bills in the front of it. The first would cover the rest of the check. The second would cover the check and give the waitress a nice tip. I reached down to pick out the first one.

At that moment, my mind flashed back to 30 years ago. I was working as a busboy (餐厅勤杂工) in a restaurant much like the one we were in. It was long hours of hard work for low pay. I went home just barely making enough to feed my young family. I also remembered how more than once I saw the waitresses counting their small tips while worrying about how they were going to pay the rent and buy their kids the things they needed. I remembered the pain in their eyes and saw the sadness in their faces at the end of the day.

I blinked (眨眼睛) and was back in the present again, with my fingers touching the smaller bill in my wallet. I smiled, pushed it back down and picked out the larger bill. I folded it around the gift card and covered both of them with the check. As we all got up from the table, I handed them to the hardworking waitress. “You keep the change,” I said with a smile and a happy heart.

We are all one family in this world. We live together and suffer together. Do your best to be kind. Do your best to be a good person and replace the suffering with joy.