The Alchemist

I've been in quite the pensive mood lately. My thoughts have led me to reflect on one of my favorite books, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read. It containes numerous quotable passages and although it gets a little crazy in the end, its greatness far outweighs any weirdness that can be found therein. To summarize, the story is about a shepard boy whose greatest desire is to pursue his "personal legend." He has a dream and travles from Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the pyramids. Along the way he meets many people, one of which is a merchant who sells crystal at the market. The boy tells the merchant about his personal legend and in turn the merchant tells the boy that ever since he was little he had dreams of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. All he wanted to do was make enough money to be able to make the journey. He started the crystal shop and started to make money, but could never bring himself to leave someone in charge of the shop. The boy asked the merchant why he didn't go to Mecca then, when he had plenty of money and the boy to watch the shop. "Because it's the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. That's what helps me face these days that are all the same, these mute crystals on the shelves, and lunch and dinner at the same horrible cafe. I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living."

After working for the merchant for a couple of months, the boy makes a recommendation to the merchant on how he could make more money in his shop. The merchant did not want to implement the idea but later tells the boy, "You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I undertand something I didn't see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don't want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I'm going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don't want to do so."

When I first read this book I thought it was so sad that this merchant was too afraid to follow his dreams of going to Mecca when everything he was working for in life was pointing him in that direction. However, the older I get the more I realize how scary it can be to give up everything you know to pursue the unknown. I think a lot of times in life we can get pretty comfortable with what we are used to, even if it may not be what we ultimately want. It gets pretty easy to rationalize our way out of pursuing our dreams. We may even be given opportunities to see the possibilities that can come our way if we make certain changes in our lives, but if we are too afraid to implement them we may end up lamenting about the "what might have been." Anyway, I really love this aspect of the story because it forces me to examine the major decisions I make in life. Am I doing something because it will ultimately lead me to what I really want, or am I just doing it because I am afraid of pursing what I really want?

Read the book, in the words of Pedro from Napolean Dynamite, "It will make all of your wildest dreams come true."

Peace out.