Certainly life in the world brings about unexpected happenings, and you get turned around -- or jolted -- or overjoyed. And yet, you have some say in your own life. At the same time as your life seems ordained, it also seems that you ordain it. The twists and turns of your own thoughts are instrumental, and yet, not final. Everything you order in the restaurant of life, you do not receive at a moment’s notice. The waiter may serve what you did not ask for. And yet, here is the food on your plate. It is set before you, and the fork is in your hand, and you have choice.

You influence your life and the lives of those around you, and you are also influenced. The connections are so intricate that the Human eye cannot follow the threads weaving in and out.

It is like you hear the orchestra playing, and yet you play in the orchestra. There is such music being played, such a large orchestra playing it, so much going on all at once, you can hardly keep up. You try. You even try to get ahead. Out of breath, you pant and gasp.

And yet there is nothing to keep up with. What race is this you entered? “How is it,” you ask yourself, “that I got into this? And what do I do now? What is there for me to do? I do not even know all my choices.”

And so you give all you’ve got to the role you play in this moment of Eternity. You can’t get out of the game. You play it to the hilt. As you play your flute, what notes the other members of the orchestra play, what instruments, the extent of their devotion, to what they are devoted, of course influence you, and yet, at the same time, you are inviolable. You are buoyed, and you are dashed. And yet, you are not mandated to be at the beck and call of other instruments.

You name one set of influences positive, and another negative, and so your own thoughts bounce around from one influence to another. Sometimes a sour note is struck, and you clap your head with the palm of your hand. Other times, a sweet note tips its hand, and you jump for joy. And you keep trudging, moseying, or skipping along.

Whatever instrument another plays, you do not have to play it. You have choice of what instrument you play, and you have choice of how you will play it. You and everyone else in the orchestra are like circles within circles. Each of you is the pebble dropped in the pond, and you make ripples. You are the stone thrown. You are the thrower of it. And you are the pond it is thrown into.

Consider this. Consider that you are the leading stone. Consider that you throw yourself. Consider that you can affect change as well as be affected. Your only direct say is over you.

In your hearts, you want more positivity in your life and in the world. I wouldn’t think you aspire to more negativity! Beloveds, make offerings of positivity to the manifest world. Donate upliftment. Whatever may befall, rise higher and take the world with you. Take one person in the world with you. Take yourself higher. Climb a rung in the ladder, and do not go back down it.

I understand your heart gets hurt time and time again. Time and time again someone else does not live up to their promise, and you are disheartened. Never mind. You, My beloved, you who reads My words now, you, in this moment, you, beloved, you, live up to your promise.