The best 45 lessons real life has to give...ever! Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio

"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me.. It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone...

4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and  parents will. Stay in touch

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.

8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.

 12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.

 13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no
 idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret,you shouldn't be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But
 don't worry; God  never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But
 the second one is  up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in
 life, don't take no for  an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the
fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear
 purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.                           

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words:
 'In five years, will this matter?'

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because
 of anything you did or didn't do.

35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's,we'd grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

42. The best is yet to come.

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.

45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

A funny-hold-your-breath story of Francis Kong we often find ourselves into - making excuses!

     My father is a creature of habit. After dinner he would go to his room, sit on his favorite chair, wear his reading glasses and read the newspapers. This routine went on for many years.

     One evening, my father became very upset. He couldn’t find his glasses. You see, my dad is a very gentle and soft-spoken person, but when he’s mad, he’s really mad! Everybody scrambled to look for his glasses. My two brothers started moving chairs and tables and my mom started looking under everything, but nobody could find his reading glasses.


    Out of depression, my mother said, “Why don’t you look in your desk drawer and see if your glasses are there?”


     My dad replied, “Am I that stupid? If my glasses were in my drawer, would I still ask you to look for it?”

    My mother kept quiet. She turned to all of us in the house and said, “Look for your father’s glasses, all of you.”

     After more than an hour of unproductive search, my mother looked at my father and said, “Just one more time now. Could you please look into your drawers and see if your glasses are there?”

     Mumbling, as old men are in the habit of doing, he opened his drawer, looked inside. We couldn’t see the drawer’s contents from where we were standing but we did see a look of surprise from my father’s face.

      His eye’s widened but his brows narrowed. We didn’t need to be psychologists for conclude that his glasses were inside his drawer all along.

      There was a moment of suspenseful silence, a little like the calm before the storm. I could sense my mother’s anger rising. “What would my father say this time?” I wondered.


       As he held up his glasses, he looked at all of us and with a loud voice said, “Okay. Now who put my glasses back inside my drawer?”

We make excuses all the time. You and Me? Yes, all the time. But remember, its just so funny and ridiculous for the one who knows the truth.

Never – never – never – never – never- give up!!

      In 1969, magazine editor T. George Harris took a little-known magazine, put it in black, and made it into one of the outstanding magazines of its time. In 1976, soon after his magazine was bought by a major chain, Harris learned that his wife had breast cancer. Eight months later, he lost his job as a magazine editor. He then watched the magazine he had worked so hard to build suffer hard times and slowly decline until it was ultimately sold at a give-away price.

     At age fifty-five he found himself alone (his wife by then in the Sloan-Kettering Hospital), out of work, and with four children to clothe and feed. He began growing vegetables in his backyard to help feed his family and took occasional carpentry jobs to earn a little more. In all these however, Harris says the most significant part of his struggle was taking over the responsibilities of a working “mother”.

     His sons helped him run the house and shared in the chores. He bought a gross of white athletic socks and a gross of maroon socks so he wouldn’t have to “sort and match” the laundry. He’d just leave a basket of socks on the stairs. “Maroon is a universal color,” he says “It goes just as badly with blue, gray and black as with brown and green.”

     Harris couldn’t afford riding the taxi, so he began jogging to and from freelance jobs and then to the hospital to be with his wife during her meals. He gave up junk food and that, along with his daily jogging, resulted in a weight loss of thirty pounds. His hectic schedule continued for months. Some evening he wouldn’t get home until nine of ten. In January 1987 his wife died of cancer.

     Harris’s busy schedule continued for four years. In 1982 the combination improved his health, his struggle to survive and his will to succeed led him to take a risk. With little money, he and a partner launched a new, magazine from a seedy office in New York City. In a few short years, “American Health” has attracted a circulation approaching a million subscribers and has received a National Magazine Award. T. George Harris obviously didn’t get “the breaks” he made his own.