Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen:
Today I would like to begin with a story. There was once a physical therapist who traveled all the way from America to Africa to do a census about mountain gorillas. These gorillas are a main attraction to tourists from all over the world; this put them severely under threat of poaching and being put into the zoo. She went there out of curiosity, but what she saw strengthened her determination to devote her whole life to fighting for those beautiful creatures. She witnessed a scene, a scene taking us to a place we never imaged we've ever been, where in the very depth of the African rainforest, surrounded by trees, flowers and butterflies, the mother gorillas cuddled their babies.
Yes, that's a memorable scene in one of my favorite movies, called Gorillas in the Mist, based on a true story of Mrs. Diana Fossey, who spent most of her lifetime in Rwanda to protect the ecoenvironment there until the very end of her life.
Ilana Wexler's speech at 20xx
My name is Ilana Wexler. I'm 12 years old, and I am the founder of “Kids for Kerry.”
Kids for Kerry is a grassroots organization of kids that support John Kerry, want to help their futures, and get active in politics.
When my parents went to see Teresa Heinz Kerry speak, they told me that she was amazing! -- and that they thought John Kerry would make a great President. I decided to find out more about John Kerry. I talk about what I learned by using my ABCs.
“A” is America. John Kerry is a hero to America, and he will help our futures. He is a great and positive role model.
“B” is Better education. John Kerry wants to make class sizes smaller, so that children get the best part out of learning. He wants to help teachers because being a teacher is educating children, and letting them out into the world to do good things.
“C” is Compassion towards children. John Kerry wants to make sure that health care is not a privilege, but it is something that we can all afford.
This summer, I was supposed to go to my favorite camp. But instead, I decided to go to the John Kerry office every day. Kids can really help!
On , we have an interactive presidential quiz. There are 270 questions for the electoral votes John Kerry will win. Plus, 25 questions to make up for Florida from the last election.
Our next goal is to have a petition for “National No Name-Calling Day,” a day that the candidates don't say anything negative about one another. When our Vice President had a disagreement with a Democratic senator, he used a REALLY BAD word.
If I said that -- If I said that word, I would be put in a “time-out.”
I think he should be put in a time-out.
The last time I saw John Kerry, he grabbed my arm and said, “See you at the convention.” And here I am!
What will be even more amazing will be the inauguration in January, when we have a new President, knowing that kids have made a difference in this election.
To summarize, Teresa Heinz Kerry: Inspirational, amazing!
John Kerry: American hero, next President.
Kids need-Kids need positive-Kids need positive role models in politics. And our Vice President deserves a long time-out.
Whether there's afterlife, the answer has never been the same. The atheists deny after life, believing that our life is no more than from the cradle to the grave. They may care about their illustrious names after death; they may feel attached to the affection of their offspring, but they never lay their hopes on their afterlife. They may also say that good will be rewarded with good, and evil with evil, but they don't really believe any retribution in their after life.
However, in the religious world or among the superstitious people, the belief in afterlife is very popular. They do not only believe in afterlife, but thousands of reincarnations as well. In the mysterious world, there are the paradise and the hell, the celestial beings and the gods, the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas.
Maybe they really believed it, or maybe they just wanted to make use of people's veneration, the ancient emperors always declared that they were the real dragons, the sons of God, while the royal ministers claimed to be the reincarnations of various constellations. But can the stars reincarnate?
great men yearn for true love even more than ordinary people. since the ancient times, so many heroes couldn't help falling into the trap of love that the sex-trap has been regarded as one of the 36 stratagems in military tactics. fuchai, the king of the wu state, couldn't be spared of this trap, and generals dongzhuo and lubu fell deeply into it while xiangyu, the king of the western chu state , bid farewell to his beloved concubine in tears. people may have to pay very high price, even their illustrious name for the love they long for even though it may last for only a very short time. nonetheless no one can tear himself away from love. people often say that their earthly affinity is not yet finished, but in fact it is the love affinity that is the most difficult to finish.
love is shapeless and priceless. we can blame nobody when captured by it. love can not be forced, nor can it be pretended. sympathy is not love, neither is gratitude. love must be generated from the heart, and expressed in actions. it can not be called love without passions and a deep longing from the bottom of the heart. there's no impassable gulf between family love and fraternal love. some family love may turn into friendship. at the same time, natural barriers doesn't exist either between fraternal love and amatory love. some friendship may develop into amatory love. the same is true with amatory love which may change into family love after a long time of mutual grinding and polishing.the closer the relationship, and the higher the expectations are, the more difficult it is to get along with each other. family love, fraternal love and amatory love are three main human feelings. if handled well, they can bring us extreme happiness, while handled improperly, will bring us great sufferings.
Life without friends and enrich my life, like a beacon lit up my heart. Is a friend helped me when I meet with difficulties, when I encountered setbacks are friends encouraged me. She and I help each other, make progress together. Although I can't say she changed everything to me, but in the process of getting along with her, I get rid of many shortcomings, changed.
The first time I met her was in fourth grade the second half of the semester, she looks mediocre, is not so attractive, is not a pair of small eyes under the thick eyebrows, but it is god, the bridge of the nose is not high. She generous introduced herself, the teacher to arrange seat for her.
The class was over, her seat was crowded with people, everybody asked her name, from where and so on, she replied: "I live right saltworks now." I whispered: "I also live in there." All of a sudden, she turned around and said to me: "when you live in there? Can you go with me? Tell the truth the road in the cement field is terrible, I hope you can go with me." I stood there, her generous and active let I was shocked. "What's wrong? Don't want to?" She is not too big eyes looked at me. I return to absolute being, said: "no, I'd love to!" Later, we will together to and from school. In the process, I know her name is candy, before go to school in altay, performance remains one of the best! She told me in her naturally there living environment. I also listened with interest.
She told me a lot of things, for example, she and her teacher. Between students, these things let me know she is a girl of heart is very wide, can always go to others. It was also because of her generous, her tolerance, let us go closer, she always can tolerate everything of mine, if I said hard words again, she still endure to endure. Finally one day, I can't help but ask her: "you never angry?" She is still a face of smile ground to say: "what things should come to your senses, how to tolerate others, actually is also a good way to treasure the friendship, which is beneficial to oneself, you're right!" Listen to her words, I also learned to tolerance, learned to take a step back.
camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. and on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. and it went like this: “r-o-w-d-i-e, that's the way we spell rowdie. rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie.“ yeah. so i couldn't figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. (laughter) but i recited a cheer. i recited a cheer along with everybody else. i did my best. and i just waited for the time that i could go off and read my books.
but the first time that i took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, “why are you being so mellow?“ -- mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of r-o-w-d-i-e. and then the second time i tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
and so i put my books away, back in their suitcase, and i put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. and i felt kind of guilty about this. i felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and i was forsaking them. but i did forsake them and i didn't open that suitcase again until i was back home with my family at the end of the summer.
now, i tell you this story about summer camp. i could have told you 50 others just like it -- all the times that i got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that i should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. and i always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. but for years i denied this intuition, and so i became a wall street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that i had always longed to be -- partly because i needed to prove to myself that i could be bold and assertive too. and i was always going off to crowded bars when i really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. and i made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that i wasn't even aware that i was making them.
From childhood, I am a man, like to think so, so far, I have a lot of a lot of dreams, however, many of them are thinking of a new forget the old. Of course, in which there are several dreams makes me want to realize more and more.
I want to be a art teacher, teach the children to draw. They need not draw much well, but must have a rich imagination, can think out can draw. They can put the sun as various shapes; Can draw a tree out of all kinds of fruit... Guess my students grow up also can become the art teacher, even a great artist! I think I must be serious to teach them!
I also want to play with ma small jump in (although the dream is not reality, but is I the most hope!) Go to help MaiDongNa sister take care of the German shepherd and to lose the French poodle cher. And got keratitis xi shi dog disfigured and got gastroenteritis bulldogs osama bin laden. Although osama bin laden "sacrifice" in the end but I still like it very much. Believe that ugly and snow is the same. I also want to and Wendy, ma small jump? Tang fei together to find the jungle of the giant panda. Wendy the most memorable gift. I also want to go with him to meet foreign students cowhide, together with the angel gave him a use cross-stitch embroidered his name. And he go to see the little hero "little Africa". Help ballet princess to realize her dream... But the most hope still can ma small jump to our class!
Finally a dream is to hope I can be a writer aunt Yang hongying. For the children some students out of the numerous popular books.
I know, I dream too much, much to the I don't know what to do, however, I still know to study hard and make efforts to achieve those I can realize my dream of.
this is no surprise though if you look at the insights of contemporary psychology. it turns out that we can't even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions. even about seemingly personal and visceral things like who you're attracted to, you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that's what you're doing.
and groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas -- i mean zero. so ... (laughter) you might be following the person with the best ideas, but you might not. and do you really want to leave it up to chance? much better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it from there.
now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? why are we setting up our schools this way and our workplaces? and why are we making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of the time? one answer lies deep in our cultural history. western societies, and in particular the u.s., have always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation and “man“ of contemplation. but in america's early days, we lived in what historians call a culture of character, where we still, at that point, valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude. and if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had titles with things like “character, the grandest thing in the world.“ and they featured role models like abraham lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming. ralph waldo emerson called him “a man who does not offend by superiority.“
There is a wisdom called to let go, there is a kind of learning is called choice, there is a kind of victory is called a successful selection and composition of 500 15 choice and successful composition 500 words article 15. Some give up, choose more suitable for their goals, may success closer.
Materials thinkers in stork say; "The ability of survival needs more than one! Rabbit cannot learn swimming in school make hole, squirrel learn swimming in school to climb trees!" I think this is right. The swimming may really not suitable for a rabbit if give up swimming, choose to make hole maybe it could be a hole experts; Pine swim, climb a tree, I believe it will do very well.
She also have a gift for painting, usually can get something, drawing, it makes me admire her. She told me: "as long as the heart, you also can do a good job." I learned to do a good job in every thing by heart.
She taught me a lot, but most of them are of some minor in life, but it let me change a lot.
Moment of parting is always painful, tearfully bid farewell to you, my dear friends, at this moment, I just want to say to you: "thank you, this is my confession, inner, which really! Though we are far away from the, but our hearts are linked together, forever, because you are my best friend."
Many people burn incense and kowtow, do good deeds and strive for virtues, not just for the present, but mainly to let God see their sincerity so as to be reborn into a better afterlife, or to achieve the highest enlightenment after several lives of practice. They do believe in afterlife. But I can't help asking: Suppose there were no afterlife, would you still do good deeds and strive for virtues? And If God does not see what you are doing, would you still be so upright and selfless? If you work, not for serving the public and liberating the others, but just for a better afterlife of your own, isn't it a little too selfish? Comparing with this kind of believers, those who don't believe in afterlife, but still keep doing good deeds, are the most sincere and honest philanthropists, because they do them not for themselves but for other.
You may wonder if I believe in afterlife. My answer is: I know nothing about my previous life, so I dare not make improper comments on afterlife. But I do hope there's afterlife! Because our present life is so short that so many things slip away before our proper understanding. I have so many dreams, so many wishes, so many ambitions, as well as so many regrets and concerns. If there were no afterlife, all of them will remain unrealized!
so if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: when i was going to school, we sat in rows. we sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously. but nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks -- four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other. and kids are working in countless group assignments. even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as committee members. and for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse, as problem cases. and the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research. (laughter)
okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. now, most of us work in open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers. and when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less likely to take outsize risks -- which is something we might all favor nowadays. and interesting research by adam grant at the wharton school has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they're much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things that they're putting their own stamp on things, and other people's ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface.
now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. i'll give you some examples. eleanor roosevelt, rosa parks, gandhi -- all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. and they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to. and this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; they were there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they thought was right.
love can not pretend, nor can it tolerate too much selfish motives. it is reported that an old man in jiangsu province left his million yuan heritage to his young housekeeper instead of his own children, because his own children didn't take care of him while the young housekeeper accompanied him through his last lonely and helpless years.
love is easily perceivable and perceptible. flattery words may be cheatable, but true love and false feelings can easily be distinguished. if the people you love only know how to spend your money, you should be careful of them. everyone can help you spend your money if you give them the chance. never turn your love into the slave of money.
love should be selfless, and feelings should be sincere. we shouldn't judge our feelings according to the distance of the relationship. everyone treasures love and nobody can fool himself or the others. a chinese saying goes: real heroes yearn even more for true love, and great men cherish tender love for their children.
we are the saint on earth, and should treasure our love, but we should know how much is good and where to stop. since there's no ever-lasting banquet, nor is there an endless love story, we should take the gains and losses of love with perfect composure. there's fragrant grass in every corner of the earth, and you can always find your love in this world.