A Philosophy of Life

I was just thinking... When one is on the other side of 60, and there
are far less years ahead than there are behind...
How does one determine if it has all been worthwile?
Some, and far too many, I suspect, would look at the amount of money
they have made or ther material possessions they have accumulated, or the
honors they have won.
And, it's sad.
Too few ever realize that the prize in this rather hectic and complicated
game of life is the simpler things:
To have had someone to love.
To have had someone to love you in return.
To have had at least one true friend.
To have had the pleasure of being a friend.
To have accomplished something worthy of being remembered.
To have stood for something, and not against everything.
To have had the courage to stand up for your convictions.
To have been willing to fight and be criticized for what you know is right.
And to have had the courage and daring to be different.
And, to know that it takes no courage to follow the crowd.
To dare to hitch your dreams to a star and then to go after them.
Not to have ever hesitated to say "I'm sorry".
And, to have remembered to say "Thank you".
To have treated every other person as an equal but to have never bowed to 
another as superior.
To have learned that being poor is a handicap only if you let it be.
To have known that for every winner there has to be a loser, and there is
little difference between them.
To have learned that most of our problems were not brought on by others,
but by ourselves.
To know that you can be anything you want to be and do anything you want to
do, if you only make up your mind to do it.
To have learned that if God is on your side, it really doesn't matter who
might be on the other side.
To be nice to all the people you meet on the way up, because you just
might meet them again on the way down.
That money and possessions have never been able to measure a man's heart.
That the happiest people in the world have always been those who get pleasure
out of the simple things in life.
To have recognized that society has always had rules to go by, and that you
have lived up to them reasonably well.
To know that kindness is one of the more admirable vitrues, and that
understanding is not very far behind.
To know that the place in which you live is just a little better off, just
because you happen to live there. 
To have understood that for every right we have, there is also a 
responsibility, and you can't have one without the other.
That a person has never reached so high than when he stooped to lift
another less fortunate than he.
That God gave us two eyes and two ears and just one mouth, so that we could
see and hear twice as much as we talk.
To know that everything you do, and everything you say, is an example to
somebody, somewhere.
That it is impossible to worry while you are smilling.
That most of the things you fear never happen, and those that do you can do 
very little about.
And, most of all, to live every day as though it might be your last,
because it very well might be.
If we can accomplish most of these things, or at least some of them
then it has, indeed, been worthwhile.

Author: Anonymous Read during Devotional Reading at Habitat's
30/30,000 Blitz by Rev. Fer-Rell Malone, Executive Director
of Koinonia Partners, 912-922-0931.