Life wants you to like it. Just like you, it wants to be liked. It wants appreciation. It wants to be favored and treated like an auspicious guest. Is not life as much your guest as you are its? You are both guests, and you are both hosts. Your roles are interchangeable. Certainly, life offers itself to you, and it offers you many choices as if on a tray. And what is it you are to offer life?

You can start with cooperation and participation. This is a great work of art that you and life are creating. Perhaps you will collaborate with life. Perhaps you won’t be so fussy about it, plaintive about it. Instead of thinking, “I wish life wouldn’t do that,” perhaps you will think:

“What a kick life is. Look at what it has done now! What a surprise! But I will accept life’s gifts amicably. I don’t have to resist what life offers. I can go along and see what happens next. Life and I can be friends, good companions. After all, we are together, and we are going to be together for quite a while. It is like we are camping out together. We pulled out numbers, and now we are buddies here, camping out day and night, going on excursions, having a rollicking time together. If life has let the fire die out, I can rekindle it. I can help life out. We can both pull our own weight.

“When life drops the ball, I can pick it up. When life falls apart, I can pick up the pieces. Life is more impartial than I have been. I have been emotional while life shrugs its shoulders, puts its hands in its pockets and starts moseying along, tugging me with it.

“Yes, life and I are on a road trip. Actually, I can say that life is like the car I rented. I drive it, and it takes me where I want to go. Once in a while, it runs out of gas, or gets a flat tire. Then I am called on to get it moving along again. How dependent life and I are on each other. Yes, you can say we are co-dependent. Surely, we are not opponents. Surely, we are meant to be friends.

“And so, I get in the car of life again and again. Sometimes we go over smooth terrain, and sometimes it’s rough, and yet this amazing car and I go up and down hills. Sometimes we put the top down and enjoy the breeze decidedly. Sometimes I put the top up because I feel cold. Sometimes we stop and look at a breathtaking view of the universe.

“Sometimes I put the car in the garage, for I have been wanting to be away from touring for a while. But tomorrow I gladly get back in it again, and ask it where it wants to take me. I don’t mind surprises. I know what life and I are to each other. We are buddies. We have been together for a long time, and we are still on our way.

“In some ways, we have gotten to be like an old married couple, and are very kind to each other. We understand each other’s sensitivities. We understand very well. We understand each other, and I have come to understand myself. Life was never much bothered by itself. Life takes itself as it comes, and I am learning again and again to do that too. Life and I made a pact long ago that, come what may, we would get along, and so we are.”