Like the sun, life gives its light in every direction.

To kindle a fire, we must gather the scattered rays of sunlight and focus them on a single point.

But in childhood we want everything at once, and we cannot yet control the enormous light and energy that life has given us.

Eventually a day comes when we need to concentrate the light within ourselves so that we can kindle an inner fire capable of giving passion and meaning to our lives.
But we do not know what that meaning is. And so we turn towards the sky and ask: what is the meaning of my life?

Many people pass quickly over this question and bury the disturbing question somewhere within themselves, because if we truly try to find an answer, we will not easily be able to rest our heads peacefully at night. Those who forget the question will live tomorrow just as they lived yesterday. And when that unexpected guest finally arrives to release them from their yesterdays and todays, they will complain bitterly: “My life was so short, and I never had the opportunity to live.”

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There are others who are not afraid of this question and go searching for an answer. But because they do not know the answer, they begin reading the answers of those who confronted the difficult question before them, until eventually they find one that, in their judgement, is the correct answer.

Once they have reached that answer and there is no longer a question, they spend the rest of their lives as slaves to the answer they have found. They extract rules from it that others, too, must obey, because they believe they have found the single reason for their own existence and the existence of others.
They build temples for those who accept their answer and tribunals for those who do not.

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And finally there are those who realise that the question itself is a trap, because there is no answer to it somewhere outside us.

Instead of looking outward for an answer, they turn inward and return to their childhood. They remember what could once fill them with profound passion and enthusiasm, and, regardless of what others say, they devote their lives to that rediscovered inner fire.

They know that passion and love are the sacred fire within us, born when the rays of the inner sun are brought into focus.

Gradually they discover that what they do in life under the guidance of this love is connected to a mysterious source beyond human knowledge. Before that mystery, which shapes their destiny, they bow their heads in acceptance and respect, and they do not turn away from the journey along the path illuminated by the burning flame in their hearts.

They move forward trusting the inspirations of the heart; and when they cannot see those inspirations clearly, they rely honestly on the logic of an inner order that keeps them steady on their path.

Others may regard them as mad, and at times they truly do act like mad people. The truth is that those who discover genuine love and will always appear, in the eyes of others, mad and detached from the outside world.

They have chosen their path by allowing the mysterious force of that path to choose them. Perhaps they discover the meaning of their lives only when they can stand smiling before that unexpected guest. They are happy because their path has been beautiful and filled with heart.

“A free translation from Paulo Coelho's Manuscript Found in Accra”

Aydin Areta