What Are You Going To Stand For?

Let me tell you about two men that I knew through two Panamanian women. One man had been married 53 years to his lovely bride. When he died suddenly from a heart attack, he left her in good stead, with insurance policies, money in the bank and investment accounts. There were no unpaid bills, no surprises.

He'd been a faithful, hardworking man all his life. He heroically never admitted to the fact he was dying, though, in retrospect, we can see that it was coming.

Another man got sick at about the same age-72. He was dying, and he confessed to his American wife that he had another wife and another life in Panamá-and that all those years that he'd been traveling back and forth on work, it was not necessarily work, although that was how they first met.

After all those years the man destroyed her existence, made a lie of all the years that she had lived this man. Why he chose to do that when he was dying, I don't know.

And I'm not here to pronounce moral judgments. I am here to suggest that this story lets us look at two different men-at two different choices they made in regards to their significant others, in regards to having character quality there.

And then make our own choices-what are you going to stand for?