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.

And the Truth Shall be Spoken out of the Mouths of Babes

So this weekend I promised my niece Taylor that we could have a slumber party. She's 3. She has been wanting to sleep over at my house for a couple of weeks but I haven't had a free Friday night until this last Friday. She was so excited! Or so she told me. She called me on Friday and told me that she was all ready to go and that we were going to have so much fun. I talked to her mom and she told me that she had already packed her bag and was just sitting on her bed waiting for me to come and get her. I was really excited to spend some one on one time with her and was totally willing to spoil her rotten by letting her do whatever she wanted! I picked her up and after she showed me her new Disney Princess suitcase we were off! I asked her what she wanted to do and she said, "Um, let's go to your house and pop popcorn and watch a movie." I asked her what she wanted for dinner, or if she wanted to go somewhere for dinner and she said, "Um, let's just go to your house and pop popcorn and watch a movie." Sigh......okay. So we go to my house and after looking around a bit she gets into her suitcase and pulls out the bag of microwave popcorn that she brought with her, yes she actually brought some with her just in case I didn't have any. I guess we really were just going to pop popcorn and watch a movie. So out of all the super cool Disney movies that I own she picks out Sleeping Beauty, which is a good show but let's face it, it's a little on the boring side and doesn't even come close to being as good as say, Little Mermaid. So we watch Sleeping Beauty and she has to remind me on one occasion that if I don't open my eyes I will miss the movie. Finally the movie ends and I ask her what she wants to do next. Can you guess what she said? Watch another movie. I guess I should disclaim that my siblings hardly ever let their children watch tv so when they get the opportunity to do so they want to take full advantage. I convince her to walk to the store to get a slurpee before we start another movie. Can you all just tell how great of a mother I'm going to be? Popcorn and slurpees for dinner and nothing but movie watching all night long. So we eat the slurpees and I can really tell that she's in sugar overload mode because the fact that her tongue is red is the funniest thing she's ever seen in her life! I tell her that we should put on our pajamas and get ready for bed before we watch another movie. Her second movie selection of the night is Pete's Dragon. About 1/3 of the way into it I notice that it's 10 pm and I should probably be putting her to bed. I tell her it's time to go to bed and she bursts into tears and says that she doesn't want to sleep over and that she wants to go home. I called her mom and let her talk to her for a minute, she reiterates the fact that she doesn't want to sleep over and she wants to go home so her mom and I decide that I should probably drive her home. On the way there she happily tells me that she didn't really want to sleep over, she just wanted to come to my house to watch tv.......great, I was suckered by a 3 year old! So I guess when I told her we could do anything she wanted to do I I really didn't mean anything she wanted to do, I really meant anything she wanted to do that sounded fun to me because I spent the whole night trying to convince her to do something different than what she wanted. Sigh. Oh well, lesson learned. Do not have children because they will walk all over you. Okay, so maybe that wasn't the lesson of the evening but it was just a little depressing that I couldn't even handle taking care of a 3 year old for more than 12 hours.....I guess I'll stick to what I'm good at.......and as soon as I figure out what that is I'll let you know!