I know, I obsess.

But more from Manuscript Found in Accra, Paolo Coelho

“Our soul is governed by four invisible forces: love, death, power, and time.

When you are going through difficult times, remember: you might have lost some major battles, but you survived and you’re still here. That is a victory. Show your happiness and celebrate your ability to go forward. Pour your love generously out onto the fields and pastures, down the streets of the big city and across the dunes of the desert. Show that you care about the poor, for they are an opportunity for you to display the virtue of charity. And care, too, about the rich, who distrust everything and everyone, keeping their granaries crammed with grain and their coffers full, but who, despite that, cannot drive away loneliness. Never miss an opportunity to show your love, especially to those close to you, because we are always at our most cautious with them for fear of being hurt.

Love–because you will be the first to benefit. The world around you will reward you, even if, at first, you say to yourself: “They don’t understand my love.” Love does not need to be understood. It needs only to be shown. Therefore, what the future holds for you depends entirely on your capacity for love. And for that, you must have absolute and total confidence in what you are doing. Don’t let others say: “That road is better.” or “That route is easier.” The greatest gift God gave us is the power to make decisions. We were all told from childhood that what we wanted to do was impossible. As we accumulate years we also accumulate the sand of prejudices, fears, and guilt.

Free yourself from that. Not tomorrow, not tonight, but now. As I said: many of us believe we will hurt those we love if we leave everything behind in the name of our dreams. But those who truly want the best for us want us to be happy, even if they can’t understand what we are doing, and even if, at first, they try to stop us from going ahead by means of threats, promises, and tears. The adventure of the days to come needs to be filled with romance because the world needs that; therefore, when you are mounted on your horse, feel the wind on your face and enjoy the sense of freedom. But don’t forget that you have a long journey ahead. If you surrender totally to the romance of it all, you might fail. If you don’t stop occasionally to let both you and your horse rest, your horse might die of thirst or exhaustion. Listen to the wind, but don’t forget about your horse. And precisely when everything seems to be going well and your dream is almost within your grasp, that is when you must be more alert than ever. Because when your dream is almost within your grasp, you will be assailed by terrible guilt. You will see that you are about to arrive at a place where very few have ever set foot, and you will think that you don’t deserve what life is giving you. You will forget all the obstacles you overcame, all that you suffered and sacrificed. And because of that feeling of guilt, you could unconsciously destroy everything that took you so long to build.”

Lynda Filler Author, Poet, Dreamer