What's Worth Knowing, the book

I am reading a good book by a Geriatric Social Worker, Wendy Lustbader, entitled "What's Worth Knowing."
Ms. Lustbader asked her elderly clients, "If you could live your life over again what would you do differently?", and "What advice would you give a young person who is trying to live a good life?"

As readers of this blog know I become interested in the wisdom of our elders and I have been posting some of the insights and observations from older folks from time to time on this blog and I have tagged these posts "Wisdom of Elders". Finding Lustbader's book has given me a new source for nuggets of wisdom. Here is my first choice of elder wisdom from Lustbader's book. It comes from Irma Delehanty who was 72 at the time she shared this with Lustbader:

"We lost everything during the depression, except for the family. We held together. A lot of times we were barely making it, but we could go for walks with each other or somebody would get a song going and we would sing. Doing simple things together as a family made us happy. These days, wealth and success is what people strive for, and - believe me = I'm not knocking it. But what I learned as a kid has never failed me." p. 10

Irma has got it right. Like the Rolling Stones sang years ago, "You don't always get want you want but you usually get what you need."

If we changed our values and shared what we have instead of accumulate it and voluntarily decided to live more simply, we all would be a lot happier. Irma's wisdom is very valuable especially in these hard economic times.