One day, the old smart Socrates walked down the streets. A man ran up to him, “Socrates, I have to tell you something about your friend…”

“Hold up!” Socrates said. “About the story, did you put it through the three sieves（筛子）?”

“Three sieves?” the man asked. “What are three sieves?”

“Let's try this,” Socrates said. “The first sieve is the one of truth（真相）. Is the story true or not?”

“Well, I am not sure. I just heard it from a friend," the man said.

“Ah, well then the second sieve-the good sieve,” Socrates asked. "Is your story something good?”

“Uh no,” the man answered.

The smart man said, “Let's use the third sieve then. Is it necessary to tell me the story?”

“No. Not necessary,” the man said.

Socrates said with a smile, "If the story isn't true, good or necessary, just forget it and don't bother（打扰）me with it any more."

Jim suffered heart problems. In conversation he expressed little joy and it seemed that his life was drawing to a close.

When his heart problems led to operation, Jim went through it successfully, and a full recovery was expected. Within days, however, his heart was not beating properly. Jim was rushed back to operation, but nothing was found to explain the cause of his illness. He died on the operating table on the day before his 48th birthday.

Dr. Bruce Smoller, a psychologist (心理学家), had had many conversations with him, and the more he learned, the stranger he realized Jim's case was. When Jim was a child, his father, a teacher, suffered a heart attack and stayed home to recover. One morning Jim asked his father to look over his homework, promising to come home from school at noon to pick it up. His father agreed, but when Jim returned, his father had died. Jim's father was 48.

“I think all his life Jim believed he killed his father,” Dr. Smoller says. “He felt that if he had not asked him to look at his homework, his father would have lived. Jim had been troubled by the idea. The operation was the trial (判决) he had expected for forty years.” Smoller believes that Jim willed himself not to live to the age of 48.

Jim's case shows the powerful role that attitude (态度) plays in physical health, and that childhood experiences produce far-reaching effect on the health of grown-ups. Although most cases are less direct than Jim's, studies show that childhood events, besides genes, may well cause such midlife diseases as cancer, heart disease and mental illness.

Long long ago, a man lived in a village. One day, he went to a market and did some shopping. He suddenly found two boxes.

Both the two boxes were very beautiful and the man fell in love with them at the first time. So he bought them.

After he got home, he didn’t know how to use the two boxes. He thought it over and decided to do something special. He decided to put all of his happiness in the yellow box and all of his sadness in the black box. He thought that it was funny to do that.

A few days later, the yellow box was very heavy, but the black box was still light.

He didn’t know why. He decided to open the two boxes and found out the truth. He opened the yellow box and found nothing. Then he opened the black box and saw a hole at the bottom.

Then he smiled to himself and said, “Happiness is for me. Let sadness go.”