Take it into your heart that living life is not the same as running a race. Have you not had some sense of yourself as a choo-choo train that must crank those gears and get up a hill as fast as you can in order to mount another hill and another? There is more to life than this.
 
You don’t have to gallop through life, nor do you have to be a slow ponderous-seeming elephant either. You do not have to be slow-but-steady, nor do you have to be at a perfect in-between rate. Nor do you have to be the winner-take-all.
 
I invite you to live in joy even when there is a deadline. Deadlines are not a matter of life and death even as many experience deadlines as a matter of life and death, as though the world depends upon them, as if life itself is some kind of emergency.
 
To the best of My knowledge, it is I Who depend upon you. I depend upon you to sail and to fly and to enjoy and to work on this land called Earth I have set before you.
 
If I were to say that it is important that you enjoy, which it definitely is, you know I don’t mean to imply that you are to give up all responsibilities for joy. Joy is primary. You can be responsible and have joy. The idea is to take joy in whatever you are doing. Let joy be part of your life. Joy comes from inside. We have gone through this lesson before about where true re-creation comes from, not from outside but from inside.
 
Of course, go to a fair if that is your joy. And, if going to a fair is not your joy for any reason, and you still have to go, enjoy yourself at the fair anyway.
 
The story you read to your young child may well not be your first choice of what you like to read. Yet it is your joy to read a story out loud because of the joy your reading brings your young child.
 
In this case, there is no separating your joy and your child’s. Your joy doesn’t require plaudits from your child directed to you. The child’s pleasure is enough. You take the time to read to your child. Your reading out loud to your child is precious to your child, for no one’s reading aloud means the same to your child as yours. Reading aloud to your child is more than reading aloud. It is also your presence and your attention directed to your child. For a little while, reading to your son or daughter takes first place over all the other things you have to do and want to do.
 
You set a value on what you do. Embrace the work you do.
 
You keep your responsibilities. You don’t fluff them off. Nor do you neglect your joy.
 
You can do everything. And you can enjoy even that which does not commonly give you pleasure.
 
It can be said that life is a balancing act. Keep your balance regardless. Life doesn’t always go your way, nor does life always run away from you and leave you in the dust.
 
You are not in competition with your life. Your life is not a question of how fast you run or what the world and others think of your life. This is your life. It is no one else’s. It belongs to you.
 
At the same time, what your children and family think of you matters very much. They are your responsibility, and may they, with all My will, be your joy. Responsibility and life run hand in hand. They are on the same course. Responsibility and joy, joy and responsibility pull your life along. May they unite. May they be one and the same.  May you be at one with yourself.
 
Joy and responsibility are steps We speak of here that take you to Enlightenment while you are already on your way.