Be at peace. If you cannot be as delighted and happy with life as you would love to be, then at least be in peace. Be calm. Be rested. Be stable. You don't have to be thrown by life and its inconsistencies.

Remember, We had a talk once about not blaming others for what makes you unhappy? You are not to blame anyone else for your discomfort. When you are upset, it is you who chooses your upset.

Surely, someone's words or facial expression may set you off, yet it is you who sets yourself off. You have the say over yourself. Your emotions are yours. You can't blame anyone for your emotions. Nor can you blame Life.

Yes, many if not most human beings consider other people and Life responsible for how they feel. Likely, as you see it, B follows A. An outside cause caused you to feel angry or sad or unhappy or unkind. Or, you may see it that I caused or allowed something untoward and disruptive to occur in your Life that could only cause you resentment.

Even if someone intended to hurt your feelings, it is you, dear one, who has the ultimate responsibility for setting the dial of your feelings. Your feelings are your responsibility, not someone else's. Remember, your reactions are your reactions. Your feelings are your feelings. You are not a little figure in a Monopoly game that someone outside you moves around.

When you are happy, it is not exactly that another caused your happiness either. It certainly seems so to you. You insist that beautiful diamond ring your fiancé gave to you gave you great happiness. Certainly, it was intended to. The diamond ring by itself is an inanimate object. You credit even inanimate objects with happiness qualities, just as you may credit the person who offers it to you the same. Of course, some people bring out appreciation from you more than others. Your appreciation doesn't always stay constant.

Your beliefs come into question, dear ones. If you believed that this diamond ring had a curse put on it, you might well not accept it at all. And if you felt that the man who offered it to you was a blackguard, you might well not accept ten good diamonds from him either.

Somewhere you gained the idea in your life that you are supposed to react in certain ways to certain occasions that befall you.

Someone in the world has said that you and everyone are about as happy as you make up your minds to be. This seems plausible to Me.

If you had the idea that you don't have to be knocked low by certain matters, or raised high by certain matters, you may well be in accord, yet must you always be affected as you always have been?

One point here is that it may serve you well to think about what makes you happy. You have every right to focus on what gives you happiness. Substitute happy thoughts for unhappy thoughts.
 
There is an alternate for you, and this is to just know that happiness comes from within you. It's all here. You have all the ingredients for happiness right now within you. Accept these ingredients. You don't have to debate your happiness and the reasons why.

Somewhere within, you make a decision for unhappiness. Subconscious or self-righteous, somewhere within, you draw certain conclusions. You have come to the conclusion that certain conditions demand that you be happy or unhappy, and you abide by these conditions. You also carry the idea that your state of mind at this moment stems from an outside event.

You can carry that idea all through your life on Earth, but why? Nobody makes you carry this idea. Only you do that.

The idea that you choose your happiness and unhappiness seems unfounded to you.

What cleverness is there in the limited idea that you are a victim in one way or another and that must respond so at whatever cost? Just so you can say: "See, you made me unhappy. I am unhappy because of you."

Rather, let your question be: "What advantage can there really be in not letting go of offense?"

You can think of many situations in which you could only be unhappy. True? I understand, yet I also rest My case, beloveds. You may well believe that unhappiness is dropped on you and not of your making at all.