There are things in daily life that you must rise above. Remember your greatness more than your irritation. Which is lasting and which is ephemeral? You must know you were not made for annoyance or peeve or nervousness.

Even in the midst of details, you can remember your true beingness. You can have a recollection of it, even a vague glimmer of it. The slightest remembrance will carry you above that which makes you tense. You are not meant to be tense.

Tense is concerned with time. Time is pressure for you. If you knew you had all the time in the world, your life would ease. But from childhood you have been taught to hurry, to meet deadlines, to be on time.

Rather than time, have love on your mind. Substitute love for tension. Where can irritation be when you are a reservoir of My love? In truth, there is no time, so you are not limited by it.

No matter what your circumstances in life, you often feel like a mother who has ten young children, all demanding attention at once. If you have one child, sometimes you feel like that. Or if you have none. Or if you have a job, or you do not have a job. No matter what, you can feel pressure and annoyance. Also, no matter what, you do not have to feel them.

Annoyance does not come from outside you. Even if you are the mother with ten children, annoyance, like love, wells up in you. You are the wielder of it.

There is no hurry. Nothing has to be accomplished right now. What will happen if a project is not finished on time? To whom did you promise it? You promised it to yourself. You put a limit on yourself, or you accepted a limit, and then you feel you are a disappointment to yourself if you do not fulfill it on time. When you do not put pressure on yourself, will life be less fruitful or more?

And what must be perfect? What must yield to this illusive perfection? Whom do you have to satisfy? Is there some unnamed longing in your life?

If you have pressure in your life, you must like it, or you would not have it. Pressure does not exist except at your bidding or participation. Perhaps external pressure and your sense of it keep your attention off yourself and what is really bothering you or what it is you really long for and fear you cannot have so you will over-involve yourself so you will not know you long for what you really want. What longings have you put aside so you will not feel longing?

What is it you want? Peace or perfection? Peace or agitation? Perfection, time, and agitation seem to be a trio, but you do not have to relegate your life to them.

Take a day off today from your usual panorama of thinking. Do not hasten life nor put it off. Do not curry its favor nor abscond from it. Be on vacation from old thinking today as you perform your duties. Be less automatic. See what is before you rather than what you have always thought was before you. Free yourself more today than you did yesterday.

The peripherals of your day may be the same, but you will have a different day because you will have vacated old thinking. Everything does not have to be as it has always been. You do not have to live up to some old frayed picture of yourself.

Today look at the picture I have of you. I have the original. I have the true picture. And I give it to you. Will you look at it, please?