When I enrolled at Pepperdine University in 1974, my mother exercised her parental right to express her worry at my departure. I responded with typical teenage indifference and ignorance. “Mom , I’m only an hour away. What’s the bit deal?” “You just wait until you have one of your own,” she cried .“Then you’ll know what I’m feeling.” It has been a little more than a month since my daughter Devin moved into her dorm at Occidental college, and life as I know it has come to an end. Or that’s what it feels like. Mom, you were right.

The nest’s empty loneliness is almost unbearable. Why does it hurt so bad? Science has an answer: We are social mammals who experience deep attachment to our fellow friends and family, an evolutionary throwback to our Paleolithic(旧石器时代的)hunter-gatherer days of living in small bands. Bonding unified the group, aiding survival in harsh climates and against unforgiving enemies. Attachment between parents and offspring assured that there is no one better equipped to look after the future survival of your genes than yourself.

The empty-nest syndrome is real, but there is good news for this and all forms of loss and grief. According to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, we are not very good at forecasting our unhappiness. Most of us think that we would be miserable for a very long time. Gilbert calls this the durability bias, an emotional misunderstanding.

The durability bias and the failure to recognize the power of our emotional immune systems lead us to overestimate how depressed we will feel and for how long, and to underestimate how quickly we will get rid of it and feel better.

For me, taking the long view helps. How long? Deep time. Evolutionary time, in which 6,895 days represent a mere 0.000000005% of the 3.5 billion year history of life on Earth.

Each of us parents makes one small contribution to the evolutionary importance of life’s continuity from one generation to the next without a single gap, an unbroken link over the eons(永久)。

57. What message does the author want to express by telling us her experience in the first paragraph?

A. The empty-nest syndrome is really hard for old parents to bear.

B. All people should learn to love their parents no matter how old they are.

C. A person will not understand his parents´ love until he has his own child.

D. The love parents give to children is selfless and should be respected.

58. According to Daniel Gilbert, the empty-nest syndrome is­­­­         .

A. caused by our emotional misunderstanding

B. not a real problem but in our imagination

C. the result of overestimating our happiness

D. from our emotional immune systems

59. The author gets herself out of the empty-nest syndrome by holding a positive idea that        .

A. she can go to see her daughter regularly when she misses her

B. her daughter will one day come back to her after graduation

C. her daughter will understand her when she has her own children

D. the departure from her daughter is much shorter than the history of life on Earth

60. What kind of role do parents play in the human history, according to the last paragraph?

A. They cultivate talents for the development of history.

B. They help keep the life’s continuity without a broken link.

C. They accelerate the evolutionary pace of the human beings.

D. They point a right way for the next generation to develop themselves.

One family agreed with the idea that money really can buy happiness -- send the kids to summer camp! So they sent their son Joey away for the season．He was  36 as happy about the arrangement as his  37 , for after about three weeks, they finally received a  38 ．Both parents huddled together to read it．After a moment Joey’s mother     39  and said to her husband, “Well, it certainly is Joey.”

The card read, “Dear Mum and Dad, they are  40 everyone write home．Love, Joey.”

At times, families may need some  41 ．They also need togetherness lots of it．And those of us who live in families  42  that our family is far from 43  , even on the best of days．But perfection is not  44  for a strong family life.

What is required, according to family expert Nick Stinnett, are three basics．“When you have a strong  45  life,” he said, “you receive the  46  that you are loved, that you are  47  , that you are important．The  48  intake （吸收） of love and affection and respect…, gives you inner resources to deal with life more  49  .

Love, affection and  50  ――a dynamic trio （ 三重奏） in any strong family．Where there is love, there is a place of  51  ．Where there is affection, there is a place of  52 ．And where there is respect, there is a place where the mind and spirit can  53  ．

Not all of us live in family groups．But we probably come from families and there just may be a family in our future.

Dr Joyce Brothers has  54  her life to marriage and family issues．She says, “When you look at your life, the greatest happiness is family happiness.” That can be  55  in any family where you are loved, you are cared for and where you are made to feel important．Make this trio part of your family life and you truly will find happiness.