Sometimes you make decisions by default. You can’t seem to make a decision, so you make none. It could well be that by default, you made the right decision. I say right in terms of how you perceive. You might not have changed a situation but stayed in it. Years later, you may be wondering how different your life might be now had you had made a leap you did not.

Understand, beloveds, had you taken the leap, years later, you could also be wondering how different your life might be now had you stayed where you were and not made the change you did.

These are not loose ends, beloveds. You moved, or you didn’t move. Or, you moved in one direction and not another. What your life might have been had you taken a different turn in the road is for poets and fiction writers to imagine whereas, for you, in your own life, you gathered the roses as you did, and there is no return to yesteryear. There are different roses to gather now.

If you regret, stop regretting. Right at this moment what is done is done. And yet there are other choices before you now. Every day you are making choices. Every day you choose your life. You choose your life with your perceptions, beloveds, and your perceptions create your thoughts, and your thoughts create your perceptions. If you don’t like the tune you are singing, you can always sing a different tune.

Consider that you have background music running all the time. What kind of music have you put on? Marching band? Dirge? Waltzes? Happy tunes? You have a choice as to what record you put in the victrola of your mind. What background music do you play? Do you choose, “Woe is me,” or do you choose, “Happy days are here again.” What do you choose to play over and over?

It matters the records you play.

I would like to suggest that you throw out the old records. I would like to suggest that you don’t keep a collection nor start another collection. I would like to suggest that you find a new and better record every day, and put it on. Turn the volume up.

What are you listening to, beloveds?

There is a lot of beautiful music out there. You have a lot of choices. And all you have to do at any moment is to choose one song. That’s all. Just one.

Every day, life holds out a bouquet to you and asks you to choose one flower at a time. You find out more about yourself by the flowers you pick. Surely you wouldn’t pick withered flowers, and yet the old flowers of thoughts that have outlived their usefulness somehow get picked, and sometimes over and over again.

I would like to move you to choose the fresh young bloom before you. Why not? It costs the same. Actually, it costs less. Actually, it costs nothing at all.

All you have to do is to put your hand out and pick one fresh flower at a time. And tomorrow you are offered a bouquet again from which to choose. You can pick flowers you have never picked before, perhaps never seen before. You know what, pick the loveliest flower of all. Just reach your hand out, and take it.

Choose a flower of a beautiful color, a color you like to look at. Choose a sweet scent that you like to breathe in. Choose what, in your moment of choice, is the loveliest flower of all. And if all the flowers are supreme, pick them all and pin them to your lapel.