A、Because her neighbour told her it was valueless. B、Because she didn’t like the painting herself. C、Because she realized it was

Moderator:
    Curator and critic Sarah Lewis has emerged as a cultural powerhouse for her fresh perspectives on the dialogue between culture, history, and identity. Her debut book The Rise analyzes the idea of failure, focusing on case studies that reveal how setbacks can become a tool enabling us to master our destinies. As she says: " The creative process is actually how we fashion our lives and follow other pursuits. Failure is not something that might be helpful; it actually is the process. " Now, let’s welcome Ms. Lewis.
    Ms. Lewis:
    Thank you. I feel so fortunate that my job was working at the Museum of Modern Art on a study of painter Elizabeth Murray. I learned so much from her. After the curator Robert Storr selected all the paintings from her lifetime body of work, I loved looking at the paintings from the 1970s. I remember asking her what she thought of those early works. She told me that a few didn’t quite meet her own mark for what she wanted them to be. One of the works, in fact, didn’t meet her mark, so she had set it out in the trash in her studio, and her neighbor had taken it because she saw its value.
    In that moment, my view of success and creativity changed. I realized that success is a moment, but what we’re always celebrating is creativity and mastery. Mastery is in the reaching, not the arriving. It’s in constantly wanting to close that gap between where you are and where you want to be. Success motivates us, but a near win can propel us into an ongoing quest. One of the most vivid examples of this comes when we look at the difference between Olympic silver medalists and bronze medalists after a competition. Thomas Gilovich and his team from Cornell studied this difference and found that the frustration silver medalists feel compared to bronze, who are typically a bit more happy to have just not received fourth place and not medaled at all, gives silver medalists a focus on follow-up competition. The reason the near win has a propulsion is because it changes our view of the landscape and puts our goals, which we tend to put at a distance, into more proximate vicinity to where we stand. If I ask you to envision what a great day looks like next week, you might describe it in more general terms. But if I ask you to describe a great day at TED tomorrow, you might describe it with practical clarity. And this is what a near win does. It gets us to focus on what, right now, we plan to do to address that mountain in our sights. Completion is a goal, but we hope it is never the end. Thank you.
    Questions 16 to 19 are based on the recording you have just heard.
    16. What is the focus of the speaker’s first book?
    17. Why did Elizabeth Murray put one of the paintings in the trash in her studio?
    18. What is the speaker’s view of success?
    19. According to the speaker, what makes the Olympic bronze medalists happy?