Look me straight in the eye, self.

The Guy in the Glass
by Dale Wimbrow, (c) 1934

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum,
And think you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the guy in the glass.

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What an emotional week this has been.
When faced with choices and hurdles, sometimes we can look to other people to tell us what to do, where to go, how to choose. We might expect them to make us happy, pamper and stroke our egos, we might believe all the hype about ourselves and feel superior or lofty, begin to think that everyone about us should hold us up and sing our praises.
More often than not, we will enjoy such times and begin to feel that the world is our oyster and owes us a favour or two.
How worrying when we forget that we are all just the tiniest of pieces in a jigsaw, the smallest of stitches in a tapestry and without the rest..well we're insignificant.
Our lives are such that we are given endless opportunities to serve one another, in grand gestures or tiny, almost unnoticeable ways.
There will be a day when we will stand and answer to how we lived our lives and it won't matter how many friends we had, no-one will care how important we were, there won't be any measurement of how popular we might have been.
It will all be about how good a friend we were, how we made others feel important and how often we made others feel as if they were loved, special, cherished.

This post could be so overflowing with cliches, sayings, quotes.

It's nice to be important but more important to be nice.

No-one cares how much you know, they want to know how much you care.

I don't even know what I am trying to say, except I am so thrilled to know that I am loved.
I am unbelievably humbled by the volume of true and unconditional friendship that is given to me every day by so many people.

I am part of the cool group, probably THE coolest group.
Not the way the cool group in school was run, never THAT kind of cool group, this gang, this club, has very strict membership rules.

You have to be a young mother or a grandma.
You have to be married or single.
You have to be rich or have nothing.
You have to work outside the home or stay at home with your children.
You have to be skinny or overweight or somewhere in between.
You have to be dressed to kill or wearing sweats.
You have to wear high heels or crocs.
You have to be religious or an atheist or unsure of what you believe.
You have to own your own home or rent.
You have to be tee total or a drinker.
You have to live here or there.
You have to be honest.
You have to be kind.
You have to take the rough with the smooth.
You have to be funny.
You have to give and take.
You have to serve
You have to be served.
You have to share.
You have to be open.

What a cool group to be in.
No leader, no high ranking, crown wearing superior but a whole membership working towards being the best, the kindest.

To get in you have to be able to look in the mirror and feel at ease. That's a tough entrance exam alright.