>      What would I have done differently in my 20s and 30s
>      if I had known then what I know now? For one thing,
>      I would have laughed more; seen more Laurel and Hardy movies.
>      And I would have grieved less.  I would have understood
>      earlier that not all losses are permanent and that some
>      things lost were not worth keeping.
>  
>      I would have taken more time to note the changing seasons.
>      ("Can you believe it?" an elderly friend asked me one spring day.
>      "Can you believe that even if I live to be a hundred, I will
>      see all this only 100 times?")
>  
>      I would have been more daring.  Emotionally daring, that is;
>      in the spirit of Eudora Welty's observation that
>      "all serious daring starts from within."
>  
>      I would have understood sooner how profoundly satisfying
>      the ordinary transactions of daily life can be:
>      the perfect cup of morning coffee; the son shouting down
>      "good night!" from his room; the ginger-colored cat
>      caught napping in a triangle of sunlight.
>  
>  
>                      -Alice Steinbach, Baltimore _Sun_