An interesting speech to share ... I believe many FTWM could relate to some of the things said in the speech.
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>This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at
>the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an
>Honorary PhD. Worth reading !!
>
>'I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't
>Ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here
>this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be
>hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands
>of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only
>person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your
>entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a
>car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of
>your heart. Not just your bank accounts but
>also your soul.
>
>People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to
>write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a
>winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've
>received your test results and they're not so good.
>
>Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never
>to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer
>consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen.
>
>I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make
>marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and they
>to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I
>would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone,and I meet them
>for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those other
>things were not true.
>
>You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.
>So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life,not a
>manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger
>house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew
>an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
>
>Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a
>breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed
>hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration
>when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first
>finger.
>
>Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love
>you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone.
>Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And
>realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business
>taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to
>spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to
>charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you
>want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never
>be enough.
>
>It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It
>is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the
>melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is
>so easy t! o exist instead of to live.
>
>I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the
>destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is
>the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world
>and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and
>utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had
>learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at
>the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.
>Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you
>do, you will live it with joy and passion as it
>ought to be lived'.
Yeap, they have superb memories! 
