When you meet with resistance in your attempts at life, you often either withdraw quickly or you fight against with all your might. But you can persist without pushing against. You can also turn away without loss. When you can accept there is nothing for you to gain and nothing for you to lose, you will be much more neutral in your pursuits. Then neither fear nor drive will be your master. Turning back is not the same as backing away. You may go forward, but that is not the same as aggression.

You ride a horse of life that you need not whip nor rein in. You have more than two choices. Oftentimes you have thought you can only forge ahead or retreat, and only with great redness of the face, either in exertion or in embarrassment. But you can be easy in life whatever crosses your path and whichever turn you take.

You need not meet force with force. You can be resilient. You can be mighty in your direction. You may be assailed along the way, but you need not stop and fight. Know where you are going, and all is accomplished. Whatever path you go by, whatever detours you meet, whatever twists and turns in the road, whatever the changes in the weather, you are still moving. We can say that every direction is forward. Simply keep your eye on where you are going.

This is what early pioneers did, and you are a pioneer. No one has ventured forth in your life before you. You blaze new trails. You blaze them. You keep going on your path so long as it is your path. When it no longer is, then you venture another path. In any case, you travel only on never-before-trodden paths. Whatever obstacles stand in your way, they are like banners you pass through or they are signs pointing in other directions. In any case, they are not the deciders of you.

You are the decider of you. You are not a powerless creature. You are powerful enough to choose. It is not mandatory to choose to go forward any more than it is required to go back. Human beings have choices.

You set forth on an adventure without a clear map. Yet you have stars in the sky to guide you by night and a sun by day to light you. You have everything you need. Some of you reach the Pacific Ocean, and some decide to stay somewhere else along the way, or to continue later or to return to the Atlantic. But you are the journeyer. Regardless of what trials there are before you, you are the one who journeys forth in your life. You may draw sighs of relief here and there, but there is always another horizon before you. You never finish anyway.

Be more casual in life.

Take it not so personally.

It is not your pursuer. You set the tone.

Consider life a friendly encounter. Do not consider it battle. Disarm yourself. Disarm yourself from fears and fretting. Whatever setbacks you may experience, you are still here, and you are viable, and you are valuable, and you are most valuable to Me.

There are many horizons before you. You do not have to reach all of them. There will always be another. What you have to do, you are doing. It is not that you have to reach every destination. You have to reach for it! That way your compass is set. Let your heart be for it but not dependent upon it.

All the while, whatever you are doing, set your cap for Me.