On a Friday night, a poor young artist stood at the gate of the New York railway station, playing his violin. The music was so great that many people stopped to put some money into the hat of the young man.

The next day, the young artist came to the same place, and put his hat on the ground gracefully. Different from the day before, he took out a large piece of paper and laid it under his hat. Then he began to play the violin. It sounded more pleasant than ever.

Soon he was surrounded with people who were attracted by the words on that paper. It said, “Last night, a gentleman named George Sang put an important thing into my hat by mistake. Please come to claim(认领) it soon.”

After about half an hour, a middle-aged man rushed through the crowd to the violinist and said, “Yes, it’s you. I knew that you were an honest man and would certainly come here.” The young violinist asked calmly, “Are you Mr. George Sang?” The man nodded. The violinist asked, “Did you lose something?” “It’s a lottery ticket(彩票),” said the man. The violinist took out a lottery ticket on which George Sang’s name was seen. “Is it?” he asked. George nodded and took the lottery ticket and kissed it, then danced with the violinist.

The violinist was a student at an arts college and had planned to attend advanced studies in Vienna. Later his classmate asked the violinist, “At that time you needed money to pay the tuition(学费) and you had to play the violin in the railway station every day to make money. Why didn’t you keep the lottery ticket for yourself?” The violinist said, “Although I don’t have much money, I live happily. But if I lose honesty I won’t be happy forever.”

Through our lives, we can gain a lot and lose so much. But being honest should always be with us.

Anousheh Ansari is an engineer, a founding member of several tech companies, and if that’s not impressive enough, she’s also an astronaut. She’s the first Iranian to venture (冒险) into space, the first female private space explorer, and the fourth self­funded person to go into space.

Going into space has been a childhood dream for Anousheh. When she was 16 she moved to the U．S   and studied engineering. Later, she started Telecom Technologies Inc., which provided network solutions for telecommunications companies. When she sold the company in 2000, she became involved with the X PRIZE foundation.

Anousheh and her family helped sponsor (赞助) the Ansari X PRIZE of $10 million to encourage private companies to develop reusable spacecraft   that would fly to the edge of space. 26 teams from 11 countries signed up. The winning spacecraft was Spaceship One, which became the model that Virgin Galactic is based on.

Following the success of the Ansari X PRIZE, she began research for the next competition. But this time, it would be an orbital flight X PRIZE. She signed up as a back­up   astronaut with Space Adventures in Russia, an independent space exploration company to learn more about space flight. Three weeks before she was to go back home, one of the primary astronauts had an illness and couldn’t go. She was asked to fill in for him.

At the International Space Station, Anousheh became the first astronaut to blog from space. Her blog received a lot of attention as she documented what it was like to live in space and do simple tasks like brushing her teeth and hair. Anousheh described this experience as one of the most magical moments of her life. As an Iranian woman, she hopes her story will inspire other women of the Middle East to give themselves freedom and not to let society, friends or family hold them back from doing what they want to do. There’s nothing they’re not supposed to do or cannot do.

The morning that Devanshi Mavani reached the top of Kilimanjaro, the conditions were bitter. She had set off, like most hikers, the night before to time her arrival at the summit (山顶) with the sunrise. Immediately, heavy snow began to fall. “Normally people see Kenya on the other side. When we got to the summit, we saw nothing,” she says. “It was like a ski slope (斜坡). But I was crying with happiness.”

Just 17 months earlier, this trip had seemed impossible. In May 2017, Mavani was diagnosed with type I diabetes (糖尿病). She says, “I felt so low, thinking, ‘What am I going to do now in life, stuck with this?’”

The news put in jeopardy all Mavani’s hopes of travelling. She retired the year before and her son eventually flew the nest. “I felt free. It was my chance. I thought, ‘Hooray, I can enjoy life.’” But her diagnosis made Mavani scared to leave the house. Her elder sister came to help, but Mavani “couldn’t walk to the local park” without feeling unwell. Very slowly, Mavani built herself up from walking around the block to taking gentle gym classes. It was there that she met Hazel, who invited her to a talk about climbing Kilimanjaro.

When Mavani returned home that evening, she told her husband that it was something she really wanted to do. “The hike was the following year, when I was turning 60. He said, ‘You’ve got time.’ It was the best thing I did. It took my focus away from worrying about my disease to something completely different. How am I going to get fit again? How am I going to cope with this huge hike so far outside my comfort zone?”

During the seven-day trek, Mavani had to inject (注射) herself five to eight times a day. “It was -16℃ outside; I had to take off all my clothes, lying on a snowy rock. I overcame all that,” she says. “I thought, I don’t fear the diabetes. If I can do this, I can do anything.”

Mavani recently completed the West Highland Way and the Cotswolds Way, and has booked a trip to Machu Picchu in Peru.