Once upon a time, a man was lucky to have a loving son. But the young man never had to deal with any problems.

“My boy should have some experience of dealing with ill luck,” thought the father, so he sent the son into the forest to bring back some wood. Only an old cart (马车) with two oxen (公牛) was free for the work.

“If your cart breaks up in the forest, ‘Necessity’ will teach you what to do,” the man said. The son thought that “Necessity” must be a kind man who lived in the forest and helped people in trouble.

The son drove far into the forest and found lots of good trees. He cut down the trees and put the wood onto the cart. When the cart was full, he set off for home. However, as he drove over the rough ground, one of the axles (车轴) broke.

“I hope that ‘Necessity’ is nearby,” thought the son. Then he ran all the way through the forest and shouted, “NECESSITY! NE-CESS-ITY!!”

No one answered.

“I will stop searching for Father’s clever friend,” he thought. “I will do the job myself. What useless advice Father gave me!”

He went back to the cart and started to repair the axle. When the work was done, he drove home. Finally, he made a fine job of both the repair and collecting good wood.

His father was pleased with him, but the boy was quite angry. “I could not find ‘Necessity’ anywhere,” said the son. “He did not teach me anything. All I’ve learned is that 6 .”

“There you are,” smiled the father. “‘Necessity’ did teach you a good lesson. I told you he would.”

My brother and I were driving home together and started talking. As a result of this distraction, my brother took a wrong turn. Unluckily, the wrong turn took us towards a bridge and we had no way of turning back. My brother had to pay to cross. He was clearly unhappy with the mistake and the needless waste of $4.

As we drove forward, my brother noticed an old car stopping on the road. A young man was standing nearby, trying to hone someone. I was busy trying to find out which way we should go next but my brother stopped our car and asked the man if he needed any help. And he did! He had a flat tire.

My brother helped him change the tire. We started getting to know the young man. He said that this had been a bad week for him. Earlier he had gotten into a car accident, and now this tire on his way home didn’t work. But he called us “a breath of fresh air” and kept thanking us because he really would have been in big trouble if we hadn’t come along. After we finished the job, he thanked us again and tried to give us $20. “No,” I said.   “We had never thought about getting to the end of that bridge. We took a wrong turn. But now we know why we did it. It was to help you! Thank you for turning our mistake into a chance to help.”

My brother taught me a lot. He was able to turn his annoyance over the mistake into positive energy. He was able to see a chance to help (which I totally missed) even in a negative situation which could only come from a calm mind and an open heart. That was the bridge we should cross.

A mother planted many kinds of vegetables in her garden. One morning she said to her daughter, "Betty, come here. Look at all these little yellow marks on the leaves of the cabbages. They are eggs of a kind of insects. They are very beautiful but very bad for cabbages. This afternoon you must find all the eggs on the leaves and kill them. In this way, you will help us have better, greener and bigger cabbages.

Betty didn't think she should do it at once and in the end she forgot all about it. Her mother was ill for a few days and couldn't work in her garden. When she was well, she took Betty to the garden to see the cabbages. To their surprise, the insects had eaten up every leaf. When Betty saw this, she was upset and began to cry. Then her mother said to her, "We should never put off what we have to do today till tomorrow. And you must learn to deal with the things while they are small, or it will turn into a big problem."