Choose Joy

Just a thought: There is a beautiful book called "How To Stop Worrying and Start Living", by Dale Carnegie. It was written more than half a century ago, but contains a great deal of sound advice. It occurred to me that we rarely refer to "worry" anymore, but we prefer the term "stress". I began to think about what this means. Then I realized...worry is inside me, stress is something done to me. It is essentially blaming others for the emotions within me. There is a Buddhist saying "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional". This is in line with Torah as well. We are called upon to live, to worship, to love, to be happy...independent of what is happening around us. The only thing we can always control is what happens inside. We have but limited influenced on the world around us. Let us choose to be happy and holy!