Is there any reason for you not to be happy? I know you have a list of reasons why you’re not happy, beloveds. I know new reasons to be unhappy keep popping up, and you’re always adding to the list. I suggest you start a different list of all the reasons why you could be happy if only you would think of them. Start a whole new notebook for happiness.

I believe the sun rose this morning. I believe there is air to breathe into your lungs. I believe you have a body. I know you have a God-given soul. I believe that life is going on, that there are voices, that plants grow, and that planets are in place. I believe you have more love in your heart than you know, and I know you are capable of expressing it much more without bursting. I know I exist, and I know a million reasons why I created you, not as a hapless being, but as a beautiful child of Mine, given to the world, made for glory. I believe you have a different point of view from Mine, and I would like to uplift your point of view. I would like to squeeze in behind your eyes, and have you glimpse the view I do, effortlessly. Just as easily as you think of how unhappy you are, transform that thought into how happy you can be, and then how happy you will be.

What wondrousness you would see. What evidence of love. What colors and sights and sounds. You would know what miracle is, and you would know you are a miracle living a miracle surrounded by miracles, one on top of the other.

It is not so much that you take the world for granted. It is that you haven’t looked at the world. You haven’t seen what is right here before you. It is like you see only behind a screen of your mind, a smoke screen that your mind has put up with clouds here and there that block your view.

If you have known one moment of happiness in your life, you can expand it. You can allow yourself that gift. You have every reason for happiness and none for grumpiness and dissatisfaction. You are living in a world I have made. I set it before you for happiness, not disgruntledness.

You can accept happiness right now. You simply do not have to welcome unhappiness. You do not have to treat it as a welcome guest. You do not have to move over and make room for it. You have, haven’t you? You have even expected such a visitor. You have cut squares in your heart for it to stay. You have given it royal treatment. You have asked it to stay, and then you wonder why it doesn’t leave.

You may have set unhappiness within you as you would a feather in your cap. You have stuck it there. If unhappiness descended upon you unbidden, still you accepted it and did not lift a finger to help it leave.

Oh, you may have protested against it all right, but then you let it blossom. You fed it old thoughts. You reminisced with it. You went down old lanes together with it. You retraced and retraced its arrival, wished it to leave, but you never got up and showed it the door. You sat on railings and talked about old times. You paced back and forth. And then, when it would be about to leave, you would call it back as if you were loyal to it.

Be as loyal to happiness. Learn now the difference between friend and hanger-on, beloveds.