You do not want to make yourself responsible for other people. Everyone acknowledges that, but acceding to it is another story. You mind other people's business a lot. You are forever overseeing what others do. Praise is no better than objection. Praise and criticism both are your appraisal. Your life is not about appraisal, dear ones.

It is not your domain to improve others, not them, not their lives. Isn't this a remarkable thought? You are to let people be as they are until they decide to budge. In this sense, you are not your brother's keeper. You are not your mother's keeper, nor are you your children's keeper. This is not abandoning them, to acknowledge that they are sovereign over their own lives, that their lives belong to them, and are not your responsibility.

What will you do with your time when you stop supervising other people? What will become of you? You will have to find something else to entertain yourself with. What will you focus on then?

Perhaps you will turn your attention to joy rather than fault. Yes, foster joy. You have had enough attention on fault. You have even had plenty on your own faultiness. Remove the concept of fault, and you will uplift the world. There is no fault. There is no cause. There is no cause unless you mean Creation itself.

You are walking up a path to a palace. There are many steps up to the palace door. Some of the steps need fixing. Yet they are still steps, and you are wise to continue and go up them. You do not stop at each broken step to fix it. If you did, when would you get to the palace? You would be so busy fussing where you are that all you will see are broken steps needing to be fixed. You will be a step-fixer rather than a climber.

And so are you with the world. You keep trying to fix it when you could just as well keep going forward. This is not abandoning the world. It is letting it fix itself. It is a little grandiose to think that you are here to manually fix the world. The world does depend, however, on how you live your life and what you think about. What are you thinking about so much of the time?

Certainly, you are to help others. But you are not to fix them. If others are receptive to a hand up, give them your hand. But you do not carry their whole weight, for each must climb to the palace on his own volition and at his own rate. If you carry someone up, they will miss too much. Skipping steps is not always advantageous.

Everyone must take their own steps, even when you do not favor the steps, even when they are wrong in your eyes or anyone's, even when their steps are wrong in their own eyes. Each Human Being is responsible for himself. This is so obvious, yet so often overlooked.

When it comes to your children, they do not wear a leash. Perhaps think of your responsibility for them like a soft ribbon you wrap around their hand and hold to yourself, a soft ribbon of love that helps them to know your love. Do not attach a leather belt that restricts. Let your children be free to breathe and to find out who they are rather than what you may want them to be. And at some point, you will even have to let go of the soft ribbon and let your children wend their own way in the world. Be assured that I am watching out for them.