Returning home via ship after a war that left them broken, defeated, and full of despair, the queen and the general share a moment of vulnerability. In the battle that lies behind them, the regent has lost her eyesight, and the warrior has lost his son.

As they hold on to one another, the queen tries to offer some solace: “My father once told me that the way of the faithful is committing to pay the price, even if the cost cannot be known — and trusting that, in the end, it will be worth it.” The general agrees that the price is sometimes dear, and that, despite everything, they must continue to walk the road that they have chosen. “And I,” he continues, “will see to it that we make the end worth the price.”

There’s that saying that “everything will be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not yet the end.” It’s noble to live under an aspiration like the queen’s, to keep the faith even when the road is dark. It is just as fair, however — and perhaps why such aspirations work in the first place — to double down on your commitment. To swear not to let the sacrifices you and others have made be in vain.

Life is a one-time rodeo. It may not feel like it every day, but the stakes are as high as they could be. Don’t let your regrets paralyze you, and make your losses worth their pain. You are walking the way of the faithful, and you know only the triumph of goodness can ever mark its end.

If you go to the men’s airport toilet in Kuching, Malaysia, you’ll see a gigantic fan bolted to the wall at the end of the urinal line. As a result, you’re quite literally peeing against the wind, and while there’s a lot of movement in the air, you’re not really cooling down. If anything, you’ll get a cold.

To be fair, Kuching’s airport is not exactly the fanciest, nor the newest, but I couldn’t help but think that, with a few different decisions during construction, they could have saved a lot of the electricity they are now sending through those fans. This, in turn, brought to mind a question: When will you pay?

The idea is that, sooner or later, we’ll always pay, the question is just how much when. When you build an airport, you can pay for the more expensive air conditioning up front, or you can pay hefty electricity bills later. When you buy a house (and can afford it), you can pay the whole sum in cash, or you can pay twice as much over the course of 30 years. Even when you buy an iPhone, you can now front $1,000, or you can pay in installments, often with steep interest rates attached to them.

Of course, we don’t always pay in life with money. Sometimes, we pay with regret for changing too late. Sometimes, we pay with a missed opportunity that will never come back. All of those non-monetary costs are worth considering, but in my experience, even if you stick to the financials, you’ll come to strike many bargains over the years.

I always pay for my phones up front, and I never have to worry about getting ripped off in my monthly plan. I also pay a tiny bit more for the flexibility of being able to switch or cancel at any point, not just every two years. When it comes to my business expenses, however, I always go for annual if it means I get two months off which, at $500/month for some tools, adds up.

The list goes on and on, and I’m sure you get the idea. There is no free lunch in life, but you can swallow most bills in a way that makes them manageable. Which dosage is best will differ in each situation, but usually, if you can afford to pay sooner rather than later, you’ll save plenty — money, time, and energy — down the line.

If there’s a prize to be gained, there’s a price to be paid. The only question is when will you pay — and I hope your answer will never force you to bolt massive yet totally inefficient fans to the wall.

It’s easy to agree that travel is no competition. We all know someone who just frantically runs from landmark to landmark, and in doing so manages to visit a place without ever really being there.

What’s harder is to admit that, despite our best efforts to savor every second, some trips, vacations, and events, are for the future more so than for the present. Weddings, for example, especially the ones out of town.

A wedding is an event that runs on someone else’s schedule. Choosing to be there means choosing to go at the happy couple’s pace, if only for a day. That pace will be different from the one you would have chosen, but regardless of whether you can fully enjoy each moment, the memory of the event will last forever.

Sometimes, it is worth taking a 12-hour flight for a weekend you’ll never forget, even if you’ll suffer from the jet lag. Before you take off, however, it is always worth asking: “Is this trip for the present or for the future? Am I going for my wellbeing right now or for the memory when I’m old?” It might be hard to give an honest answer, but as long as it’s either of the two, it’s probably still a good idea to get on board.

I once had a roommate whom I remember little of, except this one sentence he said: “The days when you least feel like exercising are the ones when you need it the most.” Your art, work, or family traditions — whatever is important to you — is the same.

On some days, all you’ll have the time or wits for is to write one sentence. Those are the days when it matters most.

Life is not about winning or even finishing. It is about showing up.

The best thing about living with other people is also the worst thing about living with other people: There’s always someone else around. That means someone to talk to, have fun with, and make dinner with, but it also means someone to be considerate of, to block the bathroom when you need it, and whose quirks you’ll have to learn to accept. In other words, there’s no room to be self-centered.

When we’re young, especially in college, we often share a flat with strangers. It’s rarely the best of living arrangements. For one, we know our roommates will only be with us temporarily, and for another, when you’ve left the comfort of your home for the first time, you really need to be self-centered. Your 20s are the time to discover, find, and invent yourself, and anyone else inhibiting that freedom gets in the way of that process — in case of roommates often literally.

Once you know what you need, who you are, and where you’re going, it’s easier to negotiate the terms of co-habitation. To compromise yet ensure your health and wellbeing are taken care of. And of course, if the person we live with is someone we have chosen, ideally, we’ll value their company more so than we’ll mind their kinks.

In its best-case scenario, living together not just won’t limit us. It’ll help us become the best we can be. When you live with family, there might not be space to be self-centered, but you can still be self-caring. In fact, it is your moral obligation to take care of yourself — maybe not always first, but often enough to maintain the energy to take care of others.

When your partner works in your living room, you can’t run around naked all day, but you can still take three hours to play some video games. When your children clamor for food, you can’t eat dinner at 10 PM, but you can still make the kind of meal you’ll enjoy at any time of the day. When your daily obligations extend beyond yourself, you’ll curb a lot of the unnecessary, be it expenses, activities, or habits, and in that pruning, you’ll find out what really matters.

Whether you’re providing for or just caring about them, being a good person for others gives us a standard to live up to, and when we measure our work and behavior against that standard, we can’t help but raise our own bar.

It’s okay to be self-centered for a while. We all need space to unfold. Once the wings of your origami have fallen into the right place, however, it’s much more important to be self-caring — not as a means to feed your ego, but as a way of accomplishing the mission that’s larger than yourself.

Nine years ago, I was in Tokyo. I had the privilege of staying at a fancy hotel, and one day, I went to their impressive, competition-length, 25-meter pool. As I was doing my rounds, the skyline outside the window blurred with the edge of the pool, and it felt like I was swimming in the sky. It was awe-inspiring. I’ll never forget that feeling.

Back then, I hoped I would “make it” so that I could have experiences like that more often. Nearly a decade later, I still don’t really know what “making it” means, but as I swam in a rooftop pool in Singapore, also paddling from skyscraper to skyscraper, I remembered that feeling.

While I’m still far from being able to casually globe-hop from infinity pool to infinity pool, what I do realize by now is that swimming in the sky is not the point. It’s only one of many things that can be an inspiring experience, and most of the time, you don’t need to go to Tokyo to have one. I’ve felt equally powerful moments sitting on a park bench in Munich under a big tree swaying in the wind, and in a random bar over a beer, talking to a stranger.

Inspiration may be a perishable good, but most of the time, it is also free to refill your cup. And while new experiences do so in a special, different way than routines we’ve already enjoyed many times, the best part about them is not their novelty but their potential to become one of those nostalgic sources of stimulation — regardless of whether we can repeat them.

It took me nine years and two nights in expensive hotels to learn this lesson, but as it turns out, you only need to swim in the sky once to forever unlock a new feeling. You may never return to the same pool, but you can always bathe in the memory of the experience, and on 99 days out of 100, that will be enough.

In the 1990s, pay-per-view TV became a big thing. If you wanted to watch certain sports or adult content channels, sometimes also feature movies, you had to call a certain number and pay to unlock them. The concept wasn’t new, but for a while, it went mainstream. Today, of course, streaming itself is the main thing, and with the exception of some events, mostly combat sports, we prefer to pay a flat rate. But that doesn’t mean pay-per-view is dead.

At Cé La Vi in Singapore, a cocktail costs $20. You’re paying not for the drink but for the view. The bar sits in the bow of the “ship” that is the architectural marvel sitting at the top of the world-famous Marina Bay Sands hotel, and people don’t go there to drink — they go there to see (and perhaps be seen). From the city’s impressive financial district with its skyscrapers to the futuristic “supertrees” in the Gardens by the Bay to the countless cargo ships waiting in the water just under the horizon, your eyes will feast on your surroundings — and that’s why a bottle of 21-year-old Japanese whisky costs $8,000.

Are the prices justified? Of course not. But it’s worth thinking about how they ended up on the menu.

In some parts of the world, where nature is generous and socioeconomics are not, the tourism industry charges remarkable sums for what should be, by all accounts, free. Why does it cost money to see the Niagara Falls, Mount Fuji, or Grand Canyon up close? They were here long before us. Then again, for natural wonders, we usually pay people to maintain them more so than profit off them.

When it comes to man-made structures, however, their creators often ask us to reach deeply into our pockets. “Want to go up this tower? Walk on that bridge? Enter this castle? That’ll be $50, thank you very much.” We make something worth looking at, and then we charge per view.

Like everything, the strategy has its ups and downs, the model its hot and not-so-hot seasons. In a world of abundance, at least when it comes to entertainment, charging $20 for a movie will not work for everyone — and when I can watch amazing travel videos for free on TikTok all day long, maybe asking me to pay $30 for a 20-minute experience is no longer the best way to get me to go.

If you ask me, the largest and most ridiculous chunk of the cost, however, is the social one, not the entertainment factor. Spending $10,000 on a bottle of champagne will not make the view any better — but it will show people you can afford to spend $10,000 on some bubbly, which…what is that for again?

Whether it’s on the TV, at the club, or at an UNESCO World Heritage site: Sometimes pay-per-view will be justified, and sometimes it won’t — but it’s always worth asking what you’re paying for.

When Benjamin Franklin tried to catch lightning in a bottle, he couldn’t just wave his arms and shout at the stormy sky. Instead, he hid in a shed, patiently waiting for the hemp string of his kite to transfer some electricity to a house key attached to the string. Eventually, he held his hand to the key — and voilà, a tiny spark jumped from it to his hand.

When we hope to accomplish something big, it can be harder to wait for inspiration to strike than to supplant it with a lot of uninspired toiling. We think the grind will earn us the lightning, and sometimes, it does. Often, however, the weather just isn’t right. Where there’s no storm, there can be no discharge, but in time, nature always supplies another storm. Why not simply lie and wait?

You can’t write a million-copy bestseller without a brilliant idea, and you can’t grow a movement without a meaningful cause. But these things are hard to find, and so it’s okay to take your time to find them. Just like giving up is still an act of giving, it can be more generous — to yourself, others, and the world — to wait for inspiration to strike than to rush an unfinished project out the door.

If you want to catch sparks in a bottle, you must hold out until the clouds conjure a storm — and if you hope to do something great, it’s best to wait for the lightning.

“Are you queuing for the toilet as well?” I asked the bald-headed man in the red shirt. What a weird question to ask at a height of 30,000 feet, I thought. “No, I’m just eating a pretzel,” he said, munching on the German delicacy he had probably obtained before we took off.

And then, out of nowhere and perhaps due to his slightly inebriated state, he dropped some wisdom that hit as hard as it would have if it had fallen the entire 30,000 feet back to earth: “The language of the world is a smile.”

He continued: “My university professor taught me that ten years ago. It’s the only thing I remember from college, to be honest. Just…smile. No matter where you are, people always understand a smile.”

In some countries, people shake their head when they mean “Yes” and nod when they mean “No.” In the UK, what constitutes a peace hand sign elsewhere can go for “Screw you!” Not every gesture is universal — but a smile? That suggests joy, openness, and a well-meaning attitude everywhere around the globe.

In times when our words miss their targets more frequently than ever, any clear expression that can do without them is worth a lot. Kindness is a language we all speak from the day we are born, and a smile is the greeting that can get us off on the right foot with almost anyone.

When you smile, doors will magically open and bridges will build themselves. Just…smile.

As Cheung Wing-sing marvels at this latest innovation called “a gramophone,” a handsome man also seems interested in the American vendor’s magical music box. Unfortunately, the cute stranger spoils the romantic moment by accidentally scratching the record, and the salesman demands to be reimbursed.

Since she can afford it, Wing-sing squares the bill in his place. All she asks in return? To take the broken record home. When her sister later asks her why she bought a record that can no longer be played, Wing-sing says: “I did not buy a record, dear sis. I bought a feeling.”

I’m always fascinated by how far money goes with people as opposed to personal goals. If you want to save $10,000 as a safety cushion, $10 will feel like almost nothing. That same $10, however, can buy a friend a meal and make their day or even their whole week. It can buy flowers for someone you like or love, or a little toy for your children, getting them to beam with excitement and joy.

The kind of investing we do for ourselves — buying a house, saving to start a business, growing our stock portfolios — feels big. That is as it should be, for it is only in the long run that this kind of investing even works. Investing in people, however, is incredibly cheap, because it doesn’t take much to show someone you care. It is about the gesture — the feeling — more so than the amount, and the fact that you do it matters more so than how which, in turn, matters more still than what you ultimately buy.

In Cheung Wing-sing’s case, the wrong record bought at the right time would eventually lead to a lifetime of happiness. For you, it could mean a better relationship with your coworkers, more support from your family, or the undying loyalty of a friend. There’s no saying what any given investment will have to look like, but I’m sure you’ll recognize it when the opportunity presents itself.

What’s important in life rarely comes with a money-back guarantee, but sometimes, the best thing you can buy is a feeling.