one day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley. a large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. there was not a mark or a flaw in it. yes, they all agreed it truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen. the young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart. suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, why your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine. the crowd and the young man looked at the old mans heart. it was beating strongly, but full of scars, it had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in, but they didn fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. in fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing. yes, said the old man, yours is perfect looking but i would never trade with you. you see, every scar represents a person to whom i have given my love — i tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart, but because the pieces aren e_act, i have some rough edges, which i cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared. sometimes i have given pieces of my heart away, and the other person hasn returned a piece of his heart to me. these are the empty gouges — giving love is taking a chance. although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love i have for these people too, and i hope someday they may return and fill the space in my heart. so now do you see what true beauty is? the young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. he walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. he offered it to the old man with trembling hands. i believe in people, in sheer, unadulterated humanity, i believe in listening to what people have to say, in helping them to achieve the things which they want and the things which they need. naturally,there are people who behave like beasts, who kill,who cheat, who lie and who destroy. but without a belief in man and a faith in his possibilities for the future, there can be no hope for the future, but only bitterness that the past has gone. i believe we must, each of us, make a philosophy by which we can live. there are people who make a philosophy out of believing in nothing. they say there is no truth,that goodness is simply cleverness in disguising your own selfishness. they say that life is simply the short gap in between an unpleasant birth and an inevitable death. there are others who say that man is born into evil and sinfulness and that life is a process of purification through suffering and that death is the reward for having suffered.there are others who say that man is a kind of machine which operates according to certain laws, and that if you can learn the laws and seize the power to manipulate the machine, you can make man behave automatically to serve whatever ends you have in mind. i believe these philosophies are false. the most important thing in life is the way it is lived,and there is no such thing as an abstract happiness,an abstract goodness or morality, or an abstract anything,e_cept in terms of the person who believes and who acts. there is only the single human being who lives and who, through every moment of his own personal living e_perience, is being happy or unhappy,noble or base, wise or unwise, or simply e_isting.