How quickly you bounce with the seasons. When it is winter, you put on a warm coat, a hat, mittens. In the heat of summer, how quickly you take off the coat, hat, mittens, and put on a bathing suit. Whatever your complaints about life may be, you are a good sport about the changing seasons. You take the essence of summer, and enjoy. And if you do not enjoy winter, you do go along with it. You don't protest to the extent of taking off your coat on a blustery day! You do shovel the snow. You do walk on the snow. This is what I mean when I say you are a good sport about the changing of the seasons.

The changing of seasons is a little like the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. They change as they change. You do not decide who the guards are or when they change. You may come to watch the changing of the guard. In the same way, you watch the seasons as they change. You are an onlooker.

The seasons do not ask your permission. You can only be the sightseer of seasons. In that case, you might as well be a good sport. You can even enjoy stomping on snow. You can enjoy the shoveling. You can make snowballs. You can come to terms with the changing of seasons.

In the same way, life may often come to you unbidden. You did not request a change in your life, yet change reaches out for you. What has changed has changed. Once you were young, and now you are old. Once you were the apple of someone's eyes, and that season has also changed. Whatever the changes in your life, you can only go along with them. When it seems like the season of winter has come into your life, you can still enjoy the winter, and you can still look forward to the summer, or spring, or fall.

Even if your coat is threadbare, you can take a few stitches here and there and wear it and be warm even in the cold.

Life is not a boxing match where you are knocked out for the count of ten. In life, you can always get up, and get up, you must. It is not that you fight life, but it is that you do not take it lying down. Leap up to life. Bounce.

Life is like a weather advisory. Perhaps your job has vanished. The advisory is: Search for an alternative. Keep your eyes out for another job or something else or something better.

Beloveds, even the weather you don't want offers something to you. At the least, a decision has been made for you. A circumstance may have taken you unawares. Even if the ground fell out from under you, that doesn't matter. The circumstance has alerted you even if it is after the fact. You and the circumstance have gotten to know each other now. You have had a conference. You can work together now.

If you have to climb uphill, you can climb the hill together.

Life has a tendency to put on the brakes, or to speed it up. In any case, you can enjoy the travel. You have to be somewhere doing something, so why not where you are? Of course, it is wonderful to pick all the flowers that bloom alongside your path. When the flowers become dry, you can enjoy a dried bouquet. Dried herbs still serve you. Life serves you, beloveds.

And so you serve life. Whatever comes, you pick up the threads of life and weave anew. You pick up the reins of the horse, and you keep going, rain or shine. You will catch up to where you want to be.