Manuscript Found in Accra Read Online Free Page A

and each day are slightly different even though we do not notice.
    The mountains change and are pleased: “It’s good not to be the same all the time,” they say to one another.
    Those who think the trees don’t change are wrong.They have to accept that they will be bare in winter and clothed in summer. And they reach beyond the place where they were planted because the birds and the wind scatter their seeds.
    The trees are glad. “I thought I was just one tree and now I see that I am many,” they say to their children springing up around them.

    Nature is telling us: “Change!”
    And those who do not fear the Angel of Good Fortune understand that they must go forward despite their fear. Despite their doubts. Despite recriminations. Despite threats.
    They confront their values and prejudices. They hear the advice of their loved ones, who say: “Why do that? You have everything you need: the love of your parents, wife, and children; the job it took you so long to get. Don’t run the risk of becoming a stranger in a strange land.”
    Nevertheless, they risk taking a first step—sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes out of ambition, but generally because they feel an uncontrollable longing for adventure.
    At each bend in the road, they feel more and more afraid, and yet, at the same time, they surprise themselves; they are stronger and happier.
    Joy. That is one of the main blessings of the All Powerful. If we are happy, we are on the right road.
    Fear gradually ebbs away, because it wasn’t given what it felt was its due importance.
    One question persists as we take our first steps along the path: “Will my decision to change make other people suffer?”
    But if you love someone, then you want your beloved to be happy. You might feel frightened for him initially, but that feeling soon gives way to pride at seeing him doing what he wants to do, and going where he always dreamed of going.
    Later, we might begin to experience a sense of abandonment and helplessness.
    But travelers meet other people on the road who are feeling just the same. As they talk, they realize that they are not alone; they become traveling companions and share their solutions to various obstacles. And they all feel wiser and more alive than they thought they were.
    When they are lying in their tents, unable to sleep and overwhelmed by sadness and regret, they say tothemselves: “Tomorrow, and only tomorrow, will I take another step. Besides, I can always turn back because I know the road. But one more step won’t make much difference.”

    Until one day, without warning, the road stops testing the traveler and begins to treat him generously. The traveler’s troubled spirit takes pleasure in the beauties and the challenges of the new landscape.
    And each step, which had until then been merely automatic, becomes instead a conscious step.
    Rather than speaking to him of the solace of security, it teaches him the joy of facing new challenges.
    The traveler continues his journey. He doesn’t complain of boredom now; he complains, rather, that he is tired. But at that point he rests, enjoys the landscape, and then carries on.
    Instead of spending his whole life destroying the roads he was afraid of following, he begins to love the road he is on.
    Even if his final destination remains a mystery, even if, at some point, he makes a wrong decision, God seeshis courage and sends him the necessary inspiration to put matters right.
    What continues to trouble him is not what happens, but a fear that he won’t know how to deal with it. Once he has decided to follow his path and has no alternative, he discovers that he has great willpower and that events bend to his decisions.
    “Difficulty” is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are.
    Religions teach that faith and transformation are the only ways of drawing near to God.
    Faith shows us that we are never alone.
    Transformation helps us to love the mystery.
    And