With the social media freely available, I've realized how easy it is to become a jealous cow. The truth is that however much I remind myself of the many wonderful things I have in my life, there are still moments when I look at those around me and feel bitterly upset by their success.

It's a horrible thing to admit! In an ideal world, I'd never want to be jealous of another person's achievements and I'd want to celebrate the successes of my friends. But sometimes it's hard, even when we want to. But I don't want to live my life as a jealous cow, and I assume you don't either.

It's easier to celebrate other people's wins if you celebrate your own. How often do we take the time to enjoy our success rather than instantly move onto the next thing we want to achieve? Last year, I decided to write a book. It was the only professional goal I set for myself and, while it tired me out, I got there. But as soon as it was done, I started planning my next goal-making the book a success. As I saw other people publishing books, I stopped celebrating and instead began to fear that mine wouldn't compete.

When I told a friend how I was feeling, she reminded me how much easier it is to clap for someone else when we also clap for ourselves. So, I took myself out for lunch, ordered a glass of wine and wrote myself a congratulations card. When I saw all those other books being written on my social media, I felt proud of each and every one of us who had battled to the end of the word count.

The other trick for celebrating other people's success is to realize that there is no limit on success. We can make more, which means that while it might seem as if others have everything and we have nothing, the reality is that life turns quickly and our luck could change at any time. If others have achieved those things, we can too. When we celebrate others, we're acknowledging their achievements but also cheering for ourselves as well as for our hopes and dreams and our belief that we can make them happen. And hopefully, when we do, those people will cheer for us too.

My first shopping in a general store was in Miss Bee’s when I spent the summer with my grandmother in New York.

“Go get them yourself” Miss Bee said, ignoring the shopping list held up before her nose. “I’m not your servant, so just get yourself a basket from that pile over there and start filing.”

It took me three wall-to-wall searches before I found the first item on my list―a pork can be placed between boxes of cereal and bread. Next up was toilet paper, found under the daily newspaper, and Band-Ads, found next to the face cream. The store was a puzzle, but it held some surprises too. I found a new Superman comic behind the peanut butter.

I visited Miss Bee a couple of times a week that summer. Some times she short-charged me. Other times she overcharged or sold me an old newspaper instead of a current one. Going to the store was more like going into battle. I left my Grandma’s house armed with my list—memorized to the letter—and marched into Miss Bee’s like General Patton (巴顿将军) marching into North Africa.

All summer long she found ways to trip me up. No sooner had I learned how to pronounce bicarbonate of soda (小苏打) and memorized its location on the shelf than Miss Bee rearranged the shelves and made me hunt for it all over again. By summer’s end, however, the shopping trip that had once taken me an hour was done in 15 minutes.

The morning I was to return to Brooklyn, I stopped into tell her that she was mean (刻薄的). To my amazement she laughed and said. “Well, I don’t care! Each of us is put on this earth for a reason. I believe my job is to teach every child I meet ten life lessons to help them. Think what you will, but when you get older you’ll be glad our paths crossed!”

I thought the idea was absurd until one day my daughter came to me with homework troubles.

“It’s too hard,” she said. “Could you finish my math problems for me?”

“If I do it for you, how will you ever learn to do it yourself?” I said.

Suddenly, I was back at that general store where I had learned the hard way totally up (结算) my bill along with the cashier. As my daughter went back to her homework, I wondered: Had Miss Bee really taught me something all those years ago? I took out some scrap paper and started writing.

My favorite novel is Albert Camus's The Plague(鼠疫). It was published in 1947, after Word WarⅡ.

On the surface, it's a story about an Algerian coastal town threatened by a mysterious plague. But the symbolic idea works on the concrete presentation of a metaphysical(形而上学的) problem, which is the cruel fact of suffering. Like the plague, it's just a thing that happens in the world whether we want it to or not. Camus's novel asks if we can think of suffering not as an individual burden but as a shared experience—and maybe turn it into something positive.

The key is to recognize the universality of suffering. A plague is an extraordinary event and the horror it results in is extraordinary, too. But suffering is anything but extraordinary. Every day you leave the house, something terrible could happen. The same is true for all. All of us are subject to forces over which we have no control.

A pandemic(大流行病) forces us to think about our responsibilities to the people around us. The hero of The Plague is a committed doctor named Rieux. From the very beginning, Rieux devotes himself to resisting the plague that united its victims. Each character in the story is defined(刻画) by what they do when the plague comes. No one escapes it, but those who reduce the suffering of others are the most fulfilled. The only villains are those who cannot see beyond themselves. The plague, for these people, is either an excuse to flee or an opportunity to make profits. Because they can't see that their condition is shared, a spirit of unity is completely foreign to them. And that blindness makes community impossible.

At the very end of The Plague, Camus stated his philosophy that the struggle against suffering is never over for good. The plague will return, and so will everything else that upsets humans. But the point of the book is that a shared struggle is what makes community possible in the first place.

A pandemic, terrible though it is, highlights our mutual interdependence in a way that only tragedy can. The beauty of The Plague is that it asks the reader to map the lessons of the pandemic onto everyday life. The principles that drive the hero, Rieux, are the same principles that make every society worthwhile—understanding, love and unity.

If we learn these lessons, in a moment of crisis, we'll all be better off on the other side of it.