Friday was the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi — India's great sage of nonviolence.

If he'd taken better care of himself, he'd be 140 now.

Gandhi died in 1948, the same year I was born. And in my young and restless years I thought it was a sign I was supposed to further his ideas. In 1969 I bought a little book filled with Gandhi's thoughts called "All Men Are Brothers." I still read it.

It was Mahatma Gandhi who forced the British to leave India by using protests instead of weapons. And he undermined the caste system in India. He was born into the upper class but always wore the clothing of the lower "untouchables." As prime minister of India he once said it cost the government a fortune just to keep him in poverty.

Even when I learned about the less appealing sides to the man — that he drank his own urine, slept in rooms filled with women to test his resolve — the shine never came off him for me. Even the best depictions of him — such as the Ben Kingsley film performance — never seemed to get at his essence.

The little quote book I bought did come close, however.

Today, the book is dog-eared and silverfish have eaten the glue from the binding. Pages constantly fall out and I've apparently dropped it in several shades of food over the years.

But inside the covers, Gandhi's words still sing. This, for instance, on how to live:

Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization. The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections. I am painfully conscious of both in me. The silent cry daily goes out to Truth to help me to remove these weaknesses and imperfections of mine.

Gandhi died in the ironic way that most people who preach love and peace tend to die — he was killed by assassins. He was on his way to prayer. But then it was hard to find Gandhi when he was not finishing, starting or in the middle of a prayer. He wrote:

Prayer has saved my life. Without it, I should have been a lunatic long ago. I had my share of the bitterest public and private experiences. They threw me in temporary despair. If I was able to get rid of that despair, it was because of prayer.

Lowell Thomas, the great newsman, once asked Gandhi if journalism was a worthwhile profession. Gandhi said it was, but it wasn't as worthwhile as spinning and weaving. For Gandhi, many modern professions and machines stifled the human spirit. But there was a nobility to the spinning wheel. If a person spent his life spinning, it would be a life well-spent.

Gandhi was always about the nobility of each individual soul.

Preaching his philosophy, like spinning, seems to me would also make for a life well-spent.

At age 60 and after 35 years in this business, I sometimes wonder if that idealistic kid at USU in the 1960s didn't have it right the first time.

e-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com