“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.