Manuscript Found in Accra (11 page)

And he answered:

There is nothing wrong with anxiety.

Although we cannot control God’s time, it is part of the human condition to want to receive the thing we are waiting for as quickly as possible.

Or to drive away whatever is causing our fear.

This is so from childhood onward, until we reach the age when we become indifferent to life. Because as long as we are intensely connected to the present moment, we will always be waiting anxiously for someone or something.

How can you tell a passionate heart to be still and to contemplate the miracles of Creation in silence, free of tension, fear, and unanswerable questions?

Anxiety is part of love, and should not be blamed because of that.

How can you tell someone not to worry when he has invested his money and his life in a dream but has yet to see any results? The farmer cannot speed the progress of the seasons in order to pick the fruit he planted, but he waits impatiently for the coming of autumn and harvest time.

How can you ask a warrior not to feel anxious before a battle?

He has trained to the point of exhaustion for this moment; he has given of his best. While he believes he is prepared, he fears that all his efforts could prove to be in vain.

Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.

For those
who cannot learn to do so, life will be a nightmare.

The very thing they should be grateful for—all the hours that make up a day—become a curse. They want time to pass more quickly, not realizing that this will also hasten their encounter with the Unwanted Visitor.

Even worse, in an attempt to drive away anxiety, they do things that make them even more anxious.

The mother, waiting for her son to come home, begins to imagine the worst.

The lover thinks: “My beloved is mine and I am his. And in the broad ways I sought him but found him not. With every corner I pass and with each person I ask and who fails to answer my questions, I allow the normal anxiety of love to be transformed into despair.”

The worker, while he awaits the fruits of his labors, tries to occupy himself with other tasks, each of which will bring him more moments of waiting. It will not be long before each single anxiety has combined to become one large anxiety, and he can no longer see the sky or the stars or his children playing.

And mother, lover, and worker alike all cease living their lives and simply expect the worst; they listen to rumors and complain that the day seems never-ending. They become aggressive with friends, family, and employees. They eat badly, either consuming too much or being unable to keep anything down. And at night, they lay their head on the pillow, but cannot sleep.

That is when anxiety weaves a veil through which only the eyes of the soul can see.

And the eyes of the soul are bleary with tiredness.

At that point, in walks one of humankind’s worst enemies: obsession.

Obsession arrives and says:

“Your fate now belongs to me. I will make you look for things that do not exist.

“Your joy in living belongs to me, too. From now on, your heart will know no peace because I will drive out enthusiasm and take its place.

“I will allow fear to spread throughout the world, and you will always feel afraid, but without knowing why. You don’t need to know; you just need to stay afraid and feed and fatten your fear.

“Your work, which was once an Offering, has also been taken over by me. The others will say that you set a fine example because you drive yourself so hard, and you will smile and thank them for the compliment.

“But in your heart, I will be saying that your work is now mine, and I will use it to distance you from everything and everyone—from your friends, from your son, from yourself.

“Work harder, so you won’t have to think. Work harder than you need to, so that you can stop living altogether.

“Your Love, which was once a manifestation of the Divine Energy, belongs to me, too. And the person you love will be unable to leave your side for a moment, because I am there in your heart, saying: ‘Careful, she might go away and never come back.’

“Your son, who once would have followed his own path in the world, will now be mine as well. I will have you surround him with unnecessary worries that destroy his taste for adventure and risk, that make him suffer whenever he displeases you, and that leave him feeling guilty because he has failed to live up to your expectations.”

Therefore, although
anxiety is part of life, never let it control you.

If it comes too close, say: “I’m not worried about tomorrow, because God is there already, waiting for me.”

If it tries to persuade you that taking on lots of jobs means having a productive life, say: “I need time to look at the stars in order to feel inspired and to be able to do my job well.”

If it threatens you with the ghost of hunger, say: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

If it tells you that your beloved might not come back, say: “My beloved is mine, and I am hers. She is grazing her flocks by the river, and I can hear her singing, even from afar. When she returns home, she will be tired and happy, and I will make her some food and watch over her sleep.”

If it tells you that your son has no respect for the love you lavished on him, answer: “Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love.”

That way you will keep anxiety at bay.

It will never disappear, but the great wisdom of life is to realize that we can be the masters of the things that try to enslave us.

And a young man said:

“Tell us what the future holds.”

And he answered:

We all know what awaits us in the future: the Unwanted Visitor, who could arrive at any hour, without warning, and say: “Come with me.”

And however much we may not want to, we will have no choice. At that moment, our greatest joy, or perhaps our greatest sadness, will be to look back at the past and answer the question: “Did I give enough love?”

We must love. I am not speaking only of love for another person. Loving means being open to miracles, to victories and defeats, to everything that happens each day that was given us to walk upon the face of the Earth.

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

We must love because we are loved by God.

We must be aware of the Unwanted Visitor if we are fully to understand life.

We must struggle in order to grow, but without becoming trapped by whatever power we might gain from that growth. We know that such power is worthless.

Finally, we must accept that our soul, although eternal, is, at this moment, caught in the web of time, with all its possibilities and limitations.

Our dream, the desire that is in our soul, did not come out of nowhere. Someone placed it there. And that Someone, who is pure love and wants only our happiness, did so only because he also gave us the tools to realize our dreams and our desires.

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 all 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 that 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 fall. 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.