Fear is a mode, a mood, a mind. Moods change. Your mind changes them. Change your mind. If you are suffering in life, you cannot take away the events. You can take away the suffering.

When you suffer, you are holding out for something more. You hold yourself at ransom. You hold out. You take a stand. You protest. You will not accept that which has already been given. Suffering is a choice you make. You are not without choice.

The sky can be gray and cloudy, and still you are happy. There can be blue skies. The sun can be shining, and, yet, you feel morose. You don’t have to put yourself through the paces. What is done is done. Move on.

Perhaps you have been begrudging life. You want to set new rules. You want to play for all or nothing when you can bless yourself right now. When you suffer, you have given yourself the short end of the stick. You have chosen suffering because you have decided to hold out for what you want. You will not settle for less, and, therefore, you give yourself suffering.

You wanted a dollar, and you got a dime. You tell yourself that this is cause for suffering. You refuse to meet life half way. You want all or nothing. You will not be a pushover in life, you wail. And, so, you refuse to be happy. Only when life treats you like royalty, will you be happy. You set limits for yourself, and you will not budge. You choose stubbornness and folly. Be a good sport instead.

The key to life is to move on. You have to budge. You cannot stay in the same place. If you are to grow, you have to grow. You may think you are asserting yourself. You are stamping your foot at life. What are you doing, beloved? You are fighting a losing game.

What you can change is your stance in life. You can bounce back. Instead of a fight or even reconciliation, you can say: “Okay, I didn’t like this turn of events. Nevertheless, I go on in life. I get out of the doldrums. I stop holding on. The question is not how much I like a series of events. The question is how I rise from a quandary.”

You are someone who rises. You do not dig in to an assumed position. If you are knocked down, you get up, not to fight, not to linger, but to get on with it. You are not meant to fight with life, right and left. You are to let go. Let go, and go on your merry way.

You may ask: “What does life hold for me?” When you think more about it, you might ask: “What do I hold for life? What am I holding onto?”

When a soup has been prepared for you, the question is not: “Is this the soup I like the most?” The question is: “The soup is before me. I may not favor this particular soup, yet it is before me, and so I spoon the soup. It has become my soup. I finish it, and I get up and forgot about the soup that was not my favorite. Somehow or another, it was my soup. Now I leave the table.”

And so you rise. And so you overcome whatever has come your way. It may not be the soup you would have chosen. On the other hand, you finish, and you get up from the table, and you move on. This is how you are a hero. This is how you accommodate life. You get up. You keep going. You dance to your own tune.