Even now, I have vivid memories of my last day of high school. In my mind's eye, I'm cleaning out my locker, and then staring at the emptiness for a few extra beats before slamming it shut for the last time. I'm wandering in the halls with my best friend, blissfully ignoring the bells going off every 50 minutes on schedule because, just today, we're allowed to break the rules. I'm sitting on my desk, swinging my feet, and chatting with my English teacher, Mr. Carr, in a way that makes me feel almost grown up.

It was maybe my favorite day of the whole year. Like the final layer of watercolor, the freedom and lightness I feel seeps (渗透) into the rest of my memories of that day and turns them just a shade rosier.

If the school year hasn't yet ended for you, consider what you can do to make the ending count. Why? Because when it comes to human memory, not all moments are created equal. Instead, our remembered experiences are disproportionately(不成比例地) influenced by peaks(the best moments as well as the worst) and endings(the last moments). Nobel Prizewinner Danny Kahneman, who discovered this phenomenon, called this the peak-end rule. It suggests that our judgment of a past experience is largely based on its most extreme point and its endpoint.

I took advantage of the peak-end rule years ago, when my girls were young enough to want a bedtime story each night. I remember thinking that whatever trouble and stress had occurred that day, I could make the last moments count. I could end on a note of calm and act like the patient mom I hadn't quite managed to be just hours before.

Don't mistake all moments as equal insignificance. There's a reason why yoga classes end with savasana (挺卧式). There's a reason we eat dessert last. Do organize endings carefully. As Pete Carroll might say: Finish strong. Last impressions are especially lasting.

Do you often compare yourself to other people? Comparisons can help to make decisions and motivate you but they can also pull you into a comparison trap.

Whether it's the number of goals you've scored at football or how many books you've read, it's easy to compare yourself to someone else. Scientists say it's a natural behaviour that helps humans learn from each other, live happily together and achieve more. Although comparing can be good for you, it's not always helpful and you can find yourself stuck in a comparison trap. This is when you always measure yourself against others and base your feelings on how well they seem to be doing.

Becky Goddard-Hill is a child therapist (someone who helps children understand their feelings) and author of Create Your Own Confidence. She says that comparisons can make us feel good and bad about ourselves. "Comparing up" means seeing someone doing better than you and using that to inspire yourself to aim higher and try harder. However, Goddard-Hill says, "Sometimes it can make you feel rubbish about yourself and knock your confidence." "Comparing down" is when you see someone who seems like they're not doing as well as you. This might make you feel you're doing well, says Goddard-Hill, but it can also stop you wanting to improve.

If your feelings depend on what other people are doing, "Surround yourself with cheerleaders," suggests Goddard-Hill. Notice how people make you feel and spend time with friends who celebrate your strengths rather than compare themselves to you. If you follow social media accounts that make you feel you are failing in any way, unfollow them. "Find ones that make you laugh or show you lovely places instead," she says. Finally, focus on your own achievements and how you can improve. "The best person you can compete with is yourself," says Goddard-Hill.

I used to believe that only words could catch the essence of the human soul. The literary works contained such distinct stories that they shaped the way we saw the world. Words were what composed the questions we sought to uncover and the answers to those questions themselves. Words were everything.

That belief changed.

In an ordinary math class, my teacher posed a simple question: What's 0.99 rounded to the nearest whole number? Easy. When rounded to the nearest whole number, 0.99=1. Somehow, I thought even though 0.99 is only 0.01 away from 1, there's still a 0.01 difference. That means even if two things are only a little different, they are still different, so doesn't that make them completely different?

My teacher answered my question by presenting another equation (等式): 1=0.9, which could also be expressed as 1=0.99999… repeating itself without ever ending.

There was something mysterious but fascinating about the equation. The left side was unchangeable, objective: it contained a number that ended. On the right was something endless, number repeating itself limitless times. Yet, somehow, these two opposed things were connected by an equal sign.

Lying in bed, I thought about how much the equation paralleled our existence. The left side of the equation represents that sometimes life itself is so unchangeable and so clear. The concrete, whole number of the day when you were born and the day when you would die. But then there is that gap in between life and death. The right side means a time and space full of limitless possibilities, and endless opportunities into the open future.

So that's what life is. Objective but imaginative. Unchangeable but limitless. Life is an equation with two sides that balances itself out. Still, we can't ever truly seem to put the perfect words to it. So possibly numbers can express ideas as equally well as words can. For now, let's leave it at that: 1=0.99999…and live a life like it.