Today, instead of thinking of duty, think of fun. When you think of responsibility, you do not usually think of fun, but today accept that fun and joy are your responsibility. They may not be handed to you, but you can rescue fun and joy. No matter where you are, you can pull out fun and joy. Wherever you are, the responsibility for joy is yours.

It is not yours to wait for fun and joy to appear. Fun and joy are your unalienable right to give. You are to discover fun and joy, and in so doing, you skip past the dark and dank. After all, why would you spend time on them when you can spend time on fun and joy?

When you wait in a long line, you can have fun and make joy. Joy is everywhere to be had.

You may say, "Well, woe is for sure." But if you put your hand in a grab bag, wouldn't you prefer to pull out joy? I think your hand can feel the difference. Even in this, you have choice.

When you play the slot machines, you do not play to lose. But, in life, do you think you do?

What will you attend to? In a garden, you pick flowers and discard weeds. But that is not always the case when it comes to life. Don't you feel a little foolish for what you may have latched on to? Have you not held grief and loneliness to you, as if they were worth something? Surely, you have put great value on them.

Perhaps you have thought that grief and loneliness are allocated to you, that you have a certain share or allotment of them in life. Perhaps you have thought, I'll get them out of the way now. But that which you hold close to you, you harbor, even when it is grief etc, even when you've gone beyond thinking that it is your due. You are due nothing. But all is for you.

You are like the child you has a toy wagon to which he has attached another pull-toy and another, one attached to the other, so many that it is hard to get around corners. The child may not think to detach the entourage, but you do know. You know you can travel without carrying the unnecessary with you. You know you can let go of all that which hampers your travels. Why don't you then?

If you hold that which is less than joy to you, can you not also let go of it? Who attached it to you? You or someone else? I don't see anyone else. I see you holding dross. When you can substitute joy for woe, why don't you? What do you have to gain by holding on? How can suffering possibly be more worthy than joy?

Suffering is not virtue. Joy is.

I think you have punished yourself enough. Now is time to reward yourself.

If you do not feel worthy enough to reward yourself with joy, then reward Me with joy. Allow Me to see your joy and reap it.

What you do to another, you do to Me. What you do to yourself, you do to Me. Give Me your joy. Give Me unbounded joy. You give Me great joy when you accept the joy I give you. I have allotted you joy. It is simply waiting for you to pick it up.

How can you give joy until you have it to give? Do you begin to see now what a responsibility joy is?