Manuscript Found in Accra

She said, "I was too afraid to change."

And he answered, " We are afraid to change because we think that, after so much effort and sacrifice, we know our present world. We see that the mountains always stay in the same place. We see that fully grown trees, when transplanted usually die.

So we say: "We want to be like the mountains and the trees. Solid and respectable." Even though, during the night, we wake up thinking: "I wish I was like the birds, who can visit Damascus and Baghdad and come back whenever they want to."

Or: "I wish I was like the wind, for no one knows where it comes from nor where it goes, and it can change direction without ever having to explain why."

It's nice to have dreams that we will have plenty of time in the future to do our traveling, and that, one day, we will travel. It cheers us up because we know that we are capable of doing more than we do. Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying to transform your dreams into reality.

And we think: "We have a few problems in our life, but nothing that can't be solved in time. We must serve as an example to our parents, our teachers, our children, and keep to the correct path. Our neighbors expect us to teach everyone the virtue of perseverance, to struggle against adversity and overcome obstacles."

And we feel proud of ourselves. And we are praised because we refuse to change, continuing instead in the direction Fate has chosen for us.

Wrong.

Because the correct path is the path of nature, which is constantly changing, like the dunes in the desert. Those who think the mountains don't change are wrong; they are born out of earthquakes, are eroded by wind and rain, and each day are slightly different even though we do not notice.

Nature is telling us: "Change!"

What continues to trouble you is not what happens, but a fear that you won't know how to deal with it. Once you have decided to follow your path and have no other alternative, you discover that you have great willpower and that events bend to your decisions.

"Difficulty" is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are. And when everything seems dark, and we feel alone and helpless, we won't look back, for fear of seeing the changes that have taken place in our soul. We will look ahead.

We will not fear what happens tomorrow, because yesterday we had someone watching over us. And that same Presence will remain at our side. That Presence will shelter us from suffering. Or it will give us the strength to face it with dignity. We will go farther than we think. We will seek out the place where the morning star is born. And we will be surprised when we get there how much easier it was than we had imagined."



- Paulo Coelho