The people around you may be creating a system in which it will be difficult for you to live in love, peace, and joy. You control whether you make yourself miserable or happy, but when you are in difficult circumstances, with unloving and insensitive people, in a job or other situation you dislike, or with groups of people who ridicule and belittle you, being happy and avoiding unhappiness are difficult. You enrolled in Earth School knowing life would be difficult, but that doesn’t reduce the strain of living through the difficulties.
We must not expect people around us to change or for our life situations to adjust to our needs. Our actions to bring love, peace, and joy into our lives must involve only our own words, thoughts, and behavior. Any statement about our happiness that begins with “I will be happy when . . .” followed by someone or something that must change betrays expectations that will result in continual frustration and unhappiness. Instead our statement must be “I will be happy when I . . .” followed by what I must do to change myself or my circumstances.
We must not justify our expectation that others behave as we want because we feel we are being victimized. We are victims only if we rely on someone else for our feeling of well-being. Victimhood is a self-inflicted condition. People can be victims only when they believe they are victims, do nothing to change themselves to alleviate their feelings of victimhood, and behave as though their human rights have been violated by those they regard as the oppressors. To be a victim the person must fail to exercise their ability to control their own destiny, regardless of the words, thoughts, or behavior of others.
