We learn everyday of our lives, even, at times, up to the last day. We do not always remember everything or benefit from it. History has proven that. It sometimes takes time to learn the really important things in life.  

One thing I have learned is it takes time, patience and experience to fully appreciate the essential things in life. It’s a process that one has to learn through hard work and patience.

The most important thing I have learned in life is that a good wife is a man’s most valuable asset. Maybe asset is not the best word to use to describe a relationship with one who means so much. Spouse or other half perhaps is more appropriate. Once you learn that fact everything else falls in place and begins to make sense.

Life is not easy or fair. It can be hard and unfair. A husband and wife team is more able to accept hardship, adversity and even grief better than any one single individual. There is always strength in numbers.

Children are the most important thing in life and their importance should be recognized even before they are born. I have learned they are the glue that holds a family and a nation as well together.

I have known that history and the lessons it teaches should also be if not the most but certainly one of the most important facets in life. If we cannot learn from past mistakes we are committed to repeating them over and over again. Popular opinion has it that one should look ahead and not back, our old Army First Sergeant used to admonish us with that old cliche everyday. It is not necessarily true in the overall scheme of life. Know your history and beware of those who try to rewrite it for personal gain.

My mother used to have an old Scottish proverb she was found of saying. Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see. Ronald Reagan had another, trust but verify, there is more truth than poetry in both.

Fortunes have been made by those who make a living knowing many people are gullible, greedy and lazy. Things that sound to good to be true are usually not true. P. T. Barnum made a fortune based on that premise. I tend to be in the same camp with my mother and Ronald Reagan. One reason I do, getting back to history, is they both had good track records.

I learned too get serious late in life. I chalk it up to youth and stupidity. I started to say lazy but as I look back over my life I have to say I was not lazy. I worked very hard, harder than I ever want my children and grandchildren to have to, I want them to work hard but smarter. I came home from the Army realizing I needed more than a high school education. I had a diploma but it was only earned by taking joke courses I did not have to work to receive. I went back to the high school that I had skipped through and added six more credits to my diploma. I needed them to gain entrance to the N. Y. State Ranger School. I since have learned that it was the second best decision I ever made in my life. Unequivocally the first was marrying my wife. We have been together for 54 years.

One of the points I am trying to make is that one has to put first things first in life. A good education should come first because it is a lot harder to get after the added responsibilities of a family. It bothers me to see people who I care about, which includes all young people, frittering their lives away. They have to learn nothing is free. We only get what we work for in this life. Above all they should not be duped into thinking they do not have to work for what they get out of life. That includes being snookered by anyone promising impossible solutions to life’s problems for their vote.

I am very close to the last stage in my life which consists of many different stages. I have learned that keeping busy and occupied helps overcome myriad problems accompanying old age. It does not leave you time to dwell on things which for the most part you have no control over anyhow. I write this column, sell real estate, do forestry consulting, timber sales, woodworking and partner with my partner babysitting our great-grandson two days a week.

One of the saddest things I have ever learned is that a great many people desperately need help but cannot be helped. They never will learn anything nor will any amount of teaching change that fact.