A mother (in-law)'s good advice

Last night I was chatting cheerfully with a daughter (who this time shall remain not only nameless but numberless) when the conversation suddenly took a gloomier turn as she wondered aloud whether certain friends of the family find her unpleasant.

I passed on my mother-in-law’s philosophy concerning human relationships. This can be summed up in her synopsis of a TV program she once watched about mothers-in-law.

One insightful mother-in-law said she wasn’t going to waste her time worrying about what her daughter-in-law thought about her because she figured that if you just concentrate on loving people as they are, sooner or later they will respond favorably. This is a good philosophy.

My wonderful mother-in-law

So my advice to my daughter last night and to everyone - men and women, young and old - is:

Don’t try to figure out what people think of you
- just smile big and love them as they are.