Are you aware of how tightly you hold on to what is not for you to hold on to? You try to hold people to you. You try to keep them in place. But people are travelers in their own lives. They rest when they rest, and they move on when they move on. You do not try to keep them by force of your will. They are their own being. They play a part in your life as they will, on stage one moment, off the next.

People in your life are like dance partners. They dance as they will. You do not try to hold them or make them dance only the dances you dance. They bow in and out of your life anyway. You might as well set them free.

People are like breezes that come in and out.

You have this great tendency — even an urgency — to hold people to you. You may not wish to embrace them steadily, but you want them to always be there for you. You take other people as a reading of your worth. You still think other people have something to do with you.

Most other people are really will-o'-the-wisps in your life. They are agents for change. They are passing sights in your travels through life.

You are not a hunter who captures others as though they were prey. You are one who sets all free. You hold no locks or cages. Your key to friendship is to let everyone go their way. They may bob in and out of your life, or they may bobble out. It is not for you to say what must happen or is supposed to happen.

Demand nothing of others. You certainly don't demand them to stay. They are not your property. They are not subjects in your domain.

When it is hard for you to release others from your life, then the thing to do is to release them to Me. Visualize your putting their hand in Mine. And then you leave. You walk away to seek your own good fortune and to see who or what enters your life next.

You are not dependent upon the companionship of others as much as you tend to think you are.

Sometimes you wrap yourself up in others' frailties. You would like to embed yourself in others' lives, but you can only be embossed. You are not any more integral to their lives than they are to yours.

Yet how you want to keep everyone and everything in place. You want people where you put them and you want them to stay there until you want them again. You want them to be what you want when you want.

But they do not want to do your bidding any more than you want to do theirs. They don't even know what your bidding is. You don't really know.

But you know My bidding. I bid you to free all in your life. Now is a good time to release all those you try to keep who may wander off somewhere else from time to time or altogether. You do not commandeer someone else's life. Release them from this imposed bondage to you. Free everyone.

Look, you are all wanderers. You go here and there, and you don't even know why or when. Wherever you were a moment ago, you just know that this is where you are now. How you got here is a slight mystery, and it is not one you can solve in this dimension.

In another dimension, there is nothing to solve.

All meet, and all partner, and all leave, and all meet again. There really was never a parting, and there never was a meeting, for all are One with Me. You are One with Me.

What makes you happy? That is another way of asking, What do you appreciate? That which you appreciate makes you happy. And those whom you appreciate are kindling for your soul, and it is incumbent upon you to let them know of their merit to you. They need to know. Telling them once is not enough. You must say it again and again in many ways.

My children are starved for appreciation, and you are the one to give it to them. Those whom you genuinely appreciate need to know that. They will not assume. But not hearing from you that they are appreciation, they will assume they are not.

My children need lessons in revealing their appreciation. Complaints are easier for you to express than appreciation.

Appreciation is not quite the same as gratitude, for, remember, gratitude goes to Me, but appreciation — sow appreciation everywhere.

There is a drought of appreciation in the land.

One of your roles in life is to let the world know what you appreciate. Start with whomever is next to you.