Insurance company surveys have shown that about ninety five people out of every hundred have nothing worthwhile to look forward to in life. It’s a fact; ninety five percent of us can only look forward to financial failure. The actual figures work out like this. Take one hundred young men of twenty five, with their whole adult lives ahead of them. Where will they be in approximately forty years, when they reach retirement age at about sixty five? According to survey results, the facts are bleak, one of these hundred men will be rich; four will be financially secure. Five will still be working, because they have to; thirty six will be dead, and fifty four of them will be broke.

As you watch that little white dot crawling along, dragging the line that represents all its yesterdays along behind it, think of the waste, think of the unlived lives that those ninety five lives represent. Five men out of the hundred will have financial security, without which it’s difficult to have happiness; the other ninety five will have failed.

But now let’s stop the little dot and move it back to where it started. You’re in control of the television set and all you have to do is make up your mind and the dot will go where you want it to. Now, before the dot starts moving again, let’s consider what made the lives of the five men who are successful different. More importantly, let’s consider what you can do to change your life, now, so that you’ll be one of those five successes, instead of one of the ninety five failures.

First, let’s give your life a broad road to travel on. Imagine a broad, paved road stretching from that little white dot off into the distance. Along the road, let’s add the riches of joy and accomplishment that you’ll have along the way; instead of a bleak blank screen that was all the white dot had in front of it. Let’s fill in the screen with color and movement and music, and you’re off on a wide way that stretches far into a future rich with promise. Now the road that can be your life fills the screen, and there’s room on it for you to choose your direction, choose your satisfactions, choose your enjoyments, choose your successes in life.

This road you’re looking at is wide enough so you can move to one side to avoid a bump, to another side to miss a hole in the pavement; now you’re a lot better off than those whose lives are pictured by the little white dot, that had no road at all to travel on, but just kept getting bumped, blindly, into the future. But although you’re better off, you still haven’t got it made. What happens when you come to a fork in the road? How do you decide which road to take when you come to a crossroad? It would help if you had a road map, so you could see that if you take the fork on the left it leads only to a dead-end. And you’ll have to turn around and come back to where you are now; while the road on the right leads on toward where you want to go.

Yes, a road map would be a help. The only trouble is nobody can draw a road map for your life; nobody can make your decisions for you. And when you reach a fork in the road, or a crossroad, or a turning point of whatever kind you have to make the decisions about where you want to go. And if all you know is what you’ve learned from the road so far, it may not be much help in deciding which is the right choice.

Come back for series lll in the next post…