How much does it cost to be happy? What is changed when you are happy or unhappy? The world may stay the same, yet you are happy or unhappy. It is within your power to be what you want to be. It is you who rewards yourself with happiness or punishes yourself with unhappiness. No matter how magnificent a circumstance, no matter how dire a circumstance, you have a choice. Beloveds, you can even have a tint of happiness when you are not happy, do you know what I mean?
Have you not learned responses to certain stimuli?
Have you not been unhappy in the midst of happiness? That's all you can really be, unhappy in the midst of happiness, for you are a Being made of Our love. Unhappiness can only be a dot on happiness, yet that dot seems like a blight to you.
I say to be done with unhappiness once and for all. What do you need it for?
You don't even need it to remind you of happiness. Be the quality of happiness instead.
You can go on diets to lose weight. You can exercise vigorously. You can brush your teeth every day. You can decide many things. Can you not decide to be happy, decide and be done with it, and not keep asking yourself, "Am I happy today, or am I not happy?"
If you need a reason to be happy, then find a reason. You find reasons to be unhappy. You always can, can you not? Then find a reason to be happy. Find many reasons. Change your mind.
If you want to turn your life around, be happy. What a difference that will make! You will attract happiness to you like a flower attracts a bee.
If there were an election in which happiness and unhappiness were running against each other, whom would you vote for? If you were to vote for happiness, which I suspect you would, why then would you spend time with the other fellow? Why give him the time of day?
It is not that I ask you to forswear sadness. I do not ask you to pretend unhappiness away. Have your cry, and then get up. I ask you to be like the boxing champion of the world, who, when he is knocked down, gets up. I am asking you to be a good sport, dear ones. I am asking you, contrary to the boxer, to get up and stop fighting. Accept happiness instead, and then it is yours.
And then you spread it around. Whichever you take, happiness or unhappiness, it is inevitable that you spread it around. Happiness and unhappiness are both contagious.
Make the most out of the dime of relative life that you have! Spend it, and treat others lavishly with it. Give yourself and others what you want. Accept no less. Give yourself and everyone else the best.
Happiness is free for the asking. There is no price set on it. Happiness reaches paupers and princes alike. No one has more right to happiness than you. Your share is non-stop, beloveds, if you will accept it. Accept happiness now. Make it your favorite color. Wear it happily. You are supposed to have it. Why not have it? Isn't someone going to be really happy today? Why not you, I ask. Why not you?
Do you for one minute think that I desire you to be unhappy? Certainly not. Not at all. My desire is for you to be happy. If you are not happy right now, why aren't you?
Come now, beloved, widen your lips and your heart, and smile. Be the sun that comes out today, and shine brightly for all to see.