You are someone who can count. You can count with your fingers. You can count with your mind. You can count anything you want. Far more important than how far you can count is what you choose to count.

You can count blessings; you can count faults. You can count worries; you can count friendships. You can count present friends on one hand, or you can count those who are no longer by your side on fingers and toes. You can count past errors and add recent ones. You can count money in the bank. You can count money lost. You can even count the future, and so you have, so you have. You have turned over the pages of your life before they are written, and filled the blank pages with all kinds of imaginings, many to your great discomfort. You who can count can count anything. Counting is not such a marvelous accomplishment. No need to do so much of it.

What you count is what you are looking at. Consider what you have been looking at. Consider what you haven't been looking at.

Life is not some kind of bug that you are supposed to turn over and examine.

Let life go its way, rather than accumulating it.

Let life write its own story. You don't need to cross anything out. You don't need to total columns. Life is a novel, not an accounting book.

Let life happen. Simply turn the pages. You are not an editor of your life. You are the main observer of it. An observer does not have to be a critic.

Have you not judged your own life harshly? Have you not emphasized what you see as lacks? Please consider that all you see as your failings may be your very strengths, and you have misjudged. When you accept that you really do not need to be what everyone else says you must, then you will see yourself more as I do.

You are not supposed to be like everyone else. You are not supposed to be better, and you are not supposed to be worse. You are supposed to be who you are. Search for yourself where you are rather than where you are not. The race you run is yours to run. You do not need to follow the same course as everyone else.

Those of you who are dreamers have been told to dream less. But who can say that you are supposed to be doing less dreaming. Maybe you are supposed to be dreaming more and so reach the other side of your dreams. And for those who are plodders, well, maybe you are supposed to plod on. In plodding, perhaps your dreams lie. Who can say with certainty what direction is yours to move in.

If you are a rose, you are a rose for a reason. If you are a dandelion, you are dandelion in good stead. Roses and dandelions serve great purpose in the world. One is not better than another. It's just that their purposes are different. Only, you judge one as superior and another as inferior. You have a scale you put life experiences on. You put yourself on the scale too. The scale is unreliable.

And so you pinpoint yourself, and so you discourage yourself. You relegate yourself.

Instead, honor yourself. Honor your body, and honor your soul. Honor your accomplishments, and honor your non-accomplishments. You cannot be all things to everyone, but you can be wonderful for yourself. You are not so bad. You are pretty good, in fact.

I knew what I was doing when I made you the being you are. Thank Me.