Is life mistaken, or are you mistaken?

If you win or lose, what really is the difference? You ran the race.

And yet life is not the marathon race that it sometimes seems to be. Take it easy.

You are neither a runner through life nor a dawdler. You are a constituent of life. You are not the peg that gets moved along on the board game nor do you always have choice of the route you take. Is this a surprise? Sometimes you have choice over outcomes. Sometimes you do not. You don’t know ahead of time. You set the ball in motion, and then you see where life takes you. And yet the pinball machine of life offers greater odds than any pinball machine.

Sometimes it may seem that, in your life, you have been shot out of a cannon and landed in a place where you do not belong for one reason or another. Now here is your taking-off place. Now here is where you make your choices. You can be grumpy or good-natured. You can mope or you can sparkle. Life may foist itself upon you, yet what you do then is fully up to you. You are more than a reactor to life. You may not have gotten the cards in life you would have chosen, and yet you are a chooser of how you deal with the cards you have been dealt. Where do you go from here?

You have seen people who seem to have everything in life, and yet they are dissatisfied. And you have seen people who seem to have more than their share of difficulties, and yet their life is a work of art and their spirit is indomitable. Which are you, beloveds? Which side of life have you chosen to be on? That is your fortune, and for that you don’t have to toss a coin. You only have to choose.

Outer events are not meant to be the decider of who you are and what you do. The label on a coat is not the coat itself. Your life is more than what happens to you. When life has seemingly knocked you down, it is your choice to get up, and it is your choice to stay lying down, and you have numerous choices in between. You can get up and go this way or that, or you can take the count of ten and get up then or be carried out in a stretcher. You can be glum, or you can be a hero. Being a hero isn’t foisted on you. Being a victim isn’t foisted on you either. “Foiled again,” is an attitude. How you walk in life is your choice. In that way, life is of your making. You are not a prisoner. Or, if you are, you have the key that can unlock the bars.

If you have no chair, you can sit on the floor. If you have no floor, you can sit on the ground. You are your own captain.

When you play baseball, you can hit the ball out of the playing field and run. When you play baseball, you can bunt the ball and run. Life is the playing field, and whatever the field is like on any particular day, you are a runner on the field. You catch the ball, or you fumble. You throw the ball, or it jumps out of your hand. Well, then, pick it up and throw it again. As you play, you are courteous. You uplift the world, or you don’t. It is your call to make.