“No one can go back, but everyone can go forward. And tomorrow, when the sun rises, all you have to say to yourselves is: I am going to think of this day as the first day of my life.

I will look at everything and everyone as if for the first time, especially the small things that I have grown used to, quite forgetting the magic surrounding them.

If it’s sunny tomorrow, I want to look at the sun properly for the first time. If it’s cloudy, I want to watch and see in which direction the clouds are going. Well, I will forget everything I learned about the stars, and they will be transformed once more into angels or children or whatever I feel like believing at that moment. For the first time, I will smile without feeling guilty, because joy is not a sin. For the first time, I will avoid anything that makes me suffer, because suffering is not a virtue.

I will not complain about life, saying, “Everything’s always the same and I can do nothing to change it.” Because I am living this day as if it were my first and, while it lasts, I will discover things that I did not even know were there. And I will have the courage to open the door to the sanctuary that leads to my soul. May I be capable of accepting myself as I am: a person who walks and feels and talks like anyone else, but who, despite his faults, is also brave.

And then I will have lived each hour of my day as if it were a constant surprise to me, to this “I” who was not created by my father or my mother or by school, but by everything I have experienced up until now, and which I suddenly forgot in order to discover it all anew.”

Paulo Coelho – Manuscript Found in Accra