A story told by twelve people

　The First Man

　　One day, I slipped on a wet tile floor and was about to fall when a man in a wheelchair reached out and gave me a hand. He said, "That's how I fell three years ago."

　　The second man

　　One day, I was walking out of the fire station after work when a strange woman suddenly ran up to me and hugged me. I panicked and didn't know what was going on. At that moment, with tears in her eyes and a joyful look on her face, she said to me, "You saved me from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001."

　　The third person

　　That day, my dog was hit by a car right in front of my eyes, and I held him as he cried out in pain. He licked the tears from my face before he breathed his last.

　　The fourth person

　　One morning, I felt sick all over, but I needed money to get by, so I pushed through to work. In the afternoon, I was fired from my job. On the drive home, the tire leaked. When I was ready to change the tire, I found that the spare tire was also flat. In frustration, a man in a BMW pulled over and gave me a ride. In the car we talked and then he agreed to hire me to work for his company.

　　The fifth person

　　My daughter, who is 8 years old, told me to be environmentally conscious in the future. I smiled and asked, "Why?" She replied, "So you can save the planet." I smiled again and asked, "Why do you want to save the earth?" She said, "That's because all of our stuff is on the earth!"

　　The sixth person

　　Today I saw a woman with breast cancer amusing herself with her 2-year-old daughter, and I suddenly understood the truth: one should stop complaining and learn to celebrate.

　　The seventh person

　　When I hurt my leg and went to school on crutches, a boy in a wheelchair saw it and offered to carry my school bag for me. When we parted, he said to me, "I wish you a speedy recovery!"

　　The eighth person

　　I asked a successful businessman in his 70s, "Is there a secret to success?" He smiled and replied, "Yes, at least 3: read books no one else has read, think about problems no one else has thought about, and do things no one else has done."

　　The ninth person

　　I asked my 90-year-old grandmother, "In your life experience, how do you define success?" Without thinking, she replied, "Success is, looking back, being able to smile."

　　The Tenth Person

　　When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a baseball player. I asked my dad, "Dad, am I baseball material?" He said, "You'll never know unless you try." When I was in high school, I asked him, "Dad, can I be a surgeon?" He replied, "Son, you'll never know if you don't try." Today, I am a surgeon because I worked hard.

　　The Eleventh Man

　　Two years ago, when my mother was dying, my father and I, along with my three brothers and two sisters, went to my mother's bedside. The last coherent words my mother uttered before she died were, "How nice it would have been if we used to get together like this more often!"

　　The Twelfth Person

　　That day, when my father died, I kissed him on his cold forehead, suddenly realizing that it was the first time I had kissed him since I was a child.