A retired businessman was asked, "What do you do in your spare time?" He said, "When I get up in the morning I read the obituary column in the newspaper. If my name isn't there, I go back to sleep." This is true of a good many of us long before our time of retirement. We become satisfied just to be alive. No life should be lived on a "dead" level. As human beings, we must keep on aspiring to higher goals.

Thoughts by the late Rev. Paul Osumi are selected weekly by his family.