Editor's Note: This marks the 49th and final column under the name Waterfall Road in The Alleghany News. The staff of this newspaper offers its thanks to T.J. Worthington for his years of work at making this newspaper more enjoyable through his contributions to the editorial page. His weekly column will be greatly missed.

In the middle of last week I learned that the writing of this column has come to completion. It was one of those split-second realizations that come on like a light at the flip of a switch.

No matter what way I look at it, in the mind's eye I see a complete structure. The image is a brick house built by the owner with assistance and support of friends, one nail and one step at a time. The last nail has been driven, the last paint touching-up done, the last window cleaned.

In the time that I painted quite a lot, sometimes someone would ask how you know when you've finished with a painting. I went within, studied for a moment and said, "When there's no touch of any color that could improve it, it's done." Painting a room, you start in one place and paint until you're back to where you started. We call it a circle. The first column concerned listening to punk rock with headphones. The last one printed was present at a punk rock concert.

I've shared my own findings of what's important in life, democracy for one, freedom of the press for another, most especially the one and only thing that really matters, that we love one another. This, I've come to believe is the only thing in life with any real meaning. All else is self-defeating delusion. Our sense of self has to die before we can be born anew. Clinging to self is a tightening fist around the heart. We shrivel within.

I don't mean for this to be a sermon, it's just that in my experience it bears out. It really is the way to a happy life. I wouldn't go so far as to claim I have such, but I've stood on a ladder and looked over the wall enough to be convinced it's just like God said. Not that the body has to die before we get to heaven, it's the clinging to self that must go.

Then we have heaven right here on earth, even on a Civil War battlefield getting shot at. Maybe they'll miss, maybe they won't. The one is the same as the other to a truly selfless individual. In wartime a few people get the highest award for a truly selfless moment. We honor it big.

Those are the moments in our lives we feel best about, and not in the ego way of saying, "I done good." For myself, the ideal is to let it be and go on, the memory of the feeling in the heart a reminder that the only truth that is real bears out.

I don't mean by ideal this is how I live. I mean it's what I live toward. It doesn't guide all my thoughts, words and actions, but it does guide some. I'm not meaning to separate myself here from you or anyone else, rather I believe we all are guided by the inner light that is the sun of life within. We receive its light according to the density of our individual cloud cover.

Doing unto others as we want done to us helps to clear the clouds overhead in all kinds of ways. For one thing, it doesn't add anything to the guilt pile. It means we get what we give, a good rule-of-thumb given to us by the most wise, from wisdom itself. We tend to carry the guilt long after we've received, in turn, what we did that caused the guilt. And miss the good that returns.

Again, I don't mean this even as a lecture. All along the way writing the column, I've meant to share my thoughts on what is most important in life; love one another, we get what we give, and one more, know thyself. These, to me, list what it all boils down to, the substance, the elements, the real deal.

Over the last several weeks, or few months, I've been seeing repetition of themes. I don't want to be like an old concert pianist who goes on and on playing the same pieces until everyone is embarrassed for him and he never gets it. Also, I've heaped for myself a mighty full plate during the last year.

I love every facet of my life right now and might even be called moderately happy. The years of writing this column have opened my heart and my life immeasurably. I feel a loving kinship with everyone reading this. The gifts that have returned to me from writing it, gifts of the spirit, have all been heartening and from the heart. I've found many true friends, friends of the spirit.

I'll end with words from a song Carole King was singing in my head when I woke this morning.

"Something inside
Has died
And I
Can't hide
And I just can't fake it."

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