Other people and your emotions trip you up, yet you are the one who gets in a rattling taxi and goes down the bumpy roads. I do not affix blame on you nor do I justify another. I mean that the power you give to others and the resultant emotions are what give you a hard time in life, sometimes to such an extent, you may feel you would prefer to be on a desert island without anyone else around. Yet, beloveds, given the choice, you would choose to be with people, annoying as they are, whatever the cost.

And yet, interacting with other people, does not have to cost you. You are the one who extracts payment from yourself. You are the one who gets roiled. But you are not meant to be a soup that someone else is to stir any way they want, or can, or do.

You are a sovereign Being of your own life. Your life is not what happens in it. Your life is not the toll that living takes. Your life is not your story of it. Your life is you and what you choose. It would seem you have chosen drama over peace. In actuality, you are not sure about peace, similar to the way you sometimes feel about Heaven. If there were not intrigue and drama, what would you be doing? It may be that you associate peace with boredom, and you fear boredom.

If there were not strife and untoward incidents, there would not even be newspapers. What would there be to be on the news? What would happen to soap operas? What would happen to the Ten Commandments when they were not needed? What would you do without the ups and downs of inner and outer turmoil? Do you think you would be lost without difficulty? Indeed, you would be found.

You say you do not want problems, and yet you may like to get your teeth into them. You say you do not want ego, yet you wonder how you could get along without it. Without it, how could you ever be right and someone else wrong?

What would a problem-free world be like? Would everyone agree on everything? Probably not. Yet disagreement would bring enjoyment not tears. There would not be two sides; there would be one side, like a team of horses that pulls a cart. Perhaps one horse would like to go a different way, but whichever direction the horses would go in, they would pull together.

In life you are unwinding threads. Everyone is unwinding threads, and the unwinding threads crisscross. Must the crisscrossing be conflict?

Just as when you are entering a store and someone else is coming out, one of you makes way for the other. It takes half a second to be courteous. In a world of peace, good manners would rule. Courtesy would not have to be taught, for where would rudeness live when there is no fear?

Your time on Earth is short. Consider the Earth a boat, and you are on it with others who are also on the boat for a span. Even one hundred years is short. Anyway, you are on the boat. Whether it be canoe or great luxury liner, you are on a voyage together with others. Isn’t it true that on Earth you are all in the same boat?

Beloveds, you do not share the boat ride forever. It is a temporary time out. And so you make the ride as comfortable as you can for others, just as they do for you, not because of rules or because it’s proper, but because what else would you want to do but make the boat ride nice and easy for everyone?