The soul-sucking activity of TV-watching feels better when it is done with other souls.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. The older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

When you're thinking, "Why do I have to eat Aunt Sue's casserole with potato chips crumbled on top again?" change that thought to "A couple of bites won't kill me."

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear, but not that thing.