Life's highways are not necessarily always in good repair. Bumps, chuckholes, eroding pavement and detours are not uncommon.

Life's challenge is deciding how to best deal with the circumstances arising from those bumps and detours.

Life's secret, then, might be rather simple: Let principle — not circumstance — guide your actions.

The temptation to choose unwisely is ubiquitous. Circumstances often make the wrong choice not only immediately profitable, but easy. At those times, only correct principle will properly guide.

Real-life — and relatively recent — examples well illustrate:

During the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City, a computer failure allowed virtually unlimited access to Municipal Credit Union automated teller machines.

Because the ATMs had no way to check account balances with the credit union's main computer, the machines allowed members to withdraw more money than they actually had in their accounts.

The New York Times reports:

"Rather than shut down its entire ATM operation, and believing it was helping its 300,000 members during a traumatic time, the (credit) union continued to allow withdrawals, without knowing whether those making the withdrawals had the money in their accounts to cover them."

But the dishonest — driven by greed and unencumbered by principle — cashed in on the circumstance.

Sixty-six people withdrew at least $7,500 more than was in their individual accounts. In all, some 4,000 people are being investigated and some $15 million was looted.

One's imagination is stretched beyond limit to understand how anyone could take such despicable advantage of such desperate circumstances.

But take heart.

On the other side of the North American continent, a young undocumented immigrant dishwasher took a giant step in cultivating faith in the human soul. Principle, it appears, guided his actions.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

"On a lonely evening beneath the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles, Ascension Franco Gonzales had the kind of moment Mexican songwriters put to music and transform into myth.

"The ballad, or corrido, would tell the now-familiar tale: how last Aug. 27 an armored truck lurched, its back doors flipped open and out tumbled a bag containing $203,000. And how Franco . . . picked it up. And how he gave it back the next morning.

"Franco, a boyish 23-year-old with a self-deprecating sense of humor, was waiting for a bus when the $203,000 fell to the street. There wasn't another soul around."

The next morning, Franco stuffed the money in a laundry bag, met police in a nearby park and turned over the money. When the meeting was over, Franco asked only one thing: "Can I have my laundry bag back?"

Cynics who believe that no good deed goes unpunished won't be surprised to hear Franco comment, "Everybody says I'm an idiot."

But neither will mothers worldwide be surprised to know that Franco's mother, still living in Mexico, is very proud.

She has every right to be proud. Her son, it appears, did the right thing — simply because it was the right thing. And, while Franco surely appreciated the $25,000 reward, virtue — and standing on principle — is its own reward.

Money fades. In fact, of the $25,000, Franco (after taxes and check-cashing costs) netted only $17,000. Virtue is eternal. Honesty just might be mortality's greatest asset. And immeasurable is the value of a principled life.

Those who live otherwise will never know that great wealth.