Instructions For Life

This is what The Dalai Lama had to say on the millennium
Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk
When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
Respect for self, respect for others and responsibility for all your actions
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly
Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship
When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it
Spend some time alone every day
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer
Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time
In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past
Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality
Be gentle with the earth
Once a year, go someplace you've never been before
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

If
(letter from Rudyard Kipling to his son)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!