Be a Friend

If you would increase your happiness and prolong your life, forget your neighbor’s faults. Forget all the slander and unkind remarks you hear each day. Forget the temptations, forget the fault-finding, and give a thought to the cause which provokes it.

Forget the peculiarities of your friends, and only remember the good which makes you fond of them. Forget all of the personal quarrels you may have heard by accident, and which, if repeated, would sound a thousand times worse. Blot out as far as possible all the disagreeables of life. They will come, but will only grow larger when you remember them. And, the constant thoughtless acts of meanness or malice will tend only to make you more familiar with them.

Obliterate everything that was disagreeable yesterday. Start today with a clean sheet, write upon it for memory’s sake only those things which are loveable. Remember that some day we must give an account of our words, deeds, and thoughts. Therefore, let’s try to make life more beautiful for ourselves and for others.

By: Bill. S. , Akron, Ohio – Published in Central Bulletin July 1966