In December 2017, I attended a conference. Five successful women delivered speeches on the topic   “Bouncing   Back   after   Setbacks.”   As   I   sat   there   listening   to   their   many   personal   and professional mistakes and setbacks, I felt fortunate that I hadn’t made that many mistakes in my own life.

Those women had lost thousands in investments, started companies but failed, sold companies that later ended up being worth millions, and lost partners in the name of business. Despite knowing that they had, in fact, bounced back and were again doing very well, I was starting to feel sorry for them.

Then, as if someone whispered in my ear, I heard the words: “Don’t be so proud of yourself. You haven’t made any mistakes because you haven’t lived at all. Look how boring your life is.” Whose voice was this, and how dare it speak to me like that?

I think, for the first time, I heard my own heart speak. It shook me to my core, and it took all I had to keep from crying. I started thinking of the mistakes I had made. The voice was right. There weren’t many at all. I had followed a straight path for 38 years. I went to school, earned bachelor’s and   master’s   degrees   with   honors,   and   stayed   at   every   job   I’d   had   far   longer   than   it   was professionally beneficial for me to do so. In fact, at 38, I had only had three jobs. “The devil(魔鬼) you know is better than the one you don’t ” was my motto.

A quick review of my life made me realize that it was the actions I hadn’t taken that I was suddenly regretting. I hadn’t studied abroad. I hadn’t risked love. In fact, I was perpetually single. I hadn’t started a business. I hadn’t traveled enough. I had said “no” far more than “yes”.

The voice that whispered to me continued to the New Year. It was like it laughed at me. The thought of turning forty frightened me. It’s one thing to be unhappy and unsettled in your twenties, and perhaps even in one’s thirties. But was I going to start a new decade with the same boredom? I needed something to pick me up, some activity I could look forward to.

There are several ways from which to choose for you to keep your kids safe in your neighborhood. But the first step to keep your child safe in your neighborhood is to know your neighbors.

Knowing your neighbors can save you a lot of worry. It lets you know that the car that has just driven down the street belongs to “the yellow house on the corner”, or the truck that has just driven by the playground looks unfamiliar, but the guy in the passenger seat lives two doors down. It’s these simple things that keep you from going out of your mind whenever you see someone driving by where children are playing.

But you shouldn’t just know what they look like. The next step is to know them well. What do they do? How do they act?You might be OK with them driving by the playground since they live in the neighborhood, but are you OK with them being on the playground?Knowing your neighbors helps with several things. First you find out what kind of people they are. This helps you know if you should let your child go out in an area that they gather. Let’s face it: you don’t want your child to play around people or people’s children that curse (咒骂) or hit each other.   Sometimes you have to protect your child against your own neighbors.

Knowing them also makes them know you. Being neighbors is an interesting thing. You might not like them or have the same views as them, but we all usually protect those that we consider our own. If you know your neighbors, they know you. They will more probably look after the child of the nice lady down the street in the brick house, than the people in the house on the corner that no one ever sees.

A new study in which researchers explore the human capacity for cooperation finds that people rely on each other for help.

The study shows that when people signal a need for assistance, their small requests don’t go unanswered. Across cultures, people follow these small requests far more often than they decline them. On the rare occasions when people do decline, they explain why. These human tendencies suggest that, deep down, people from all cultures have many similar cooperative behaviors.

The new findings help solve a puzzle generated by prior research which has emphasized variation in rules and standards governing cooperation. For example, in Kenya, wealthier Orma villagers are expected to pay for public goods such as road projects. Wealthy Gnau villagers of Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, would reject such an offer because it creates an awkward moral duty to return for their poorer neighbors.

“Cultural differences like this have created a puzzle for understanding cooperation and helping among humans,” said Rossi, a chief researcher. “Are our decisions about sharing and helping shaped by the culture we grew up with? Or are humans generous and giving by nature?”

To answer those questions, the researchers analyzed over 40 hours’ video recordings of everyday life involving 350 people in geographically and culturally diverse sites. The analysis focused on the order in which one person sent a signal for help and another person responded. The situations involved “low-cost” decisions about sharing items for everyday use. Such decisions are more frequent than “high-cost” decisions like contributing to a village road’s construction, the types of decisions considered to be significantly influenced by culture.

People followed small requests seven times more often than they declined. They helped without explanation, but when they declined, 74% of the time they gave a specific reason.

“A cross-cultural preference for following small requests is not predicted by prior research on resource-sharing and cooperation, which instead suggests that culture should cause helping behavior to vary in appreciable ways due to local values and adaptations to the natural, technological, and socio-economic environment,” said Rossi. “These factors could in principle make it easier for people to say ‘no’ to small requests, but this is not what we find.”