Ikigai
A small book about finding a reason to get up in the morning. Easy to read, and it stayed with me longer than I expected.
Read journal →The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho’s short novel about a shepherd chasing a dream, and why I keep coming back to it.
There is a story about a shepherd boy who kept having the same dream. Paulo Coelho wrote it down, called it The Alchemist, and it has been travelling around the world ever since. I have read it more than once.
The Story
The boy's name is Santiago. He lives in Spain, and he dreams of a treasure waiting for him near the pyramids of Egypt. Most people would let a dream like that fade. Santiago sells his sheep and goes.
Nothing goes the way he planned. He is robbed almost at once. He works for a crystal merchant to earn his way back. He crosses the desert, falls in love, and finally meets the alchemist, who teaches him to listen to his own heart. And the treasure, when he finds it, is not where he expected. I will leave it there.
What Stayed with Me
Coelho has a name for the thing each of us is meant to do. He calls it a Personal Legend. Santiago nearly gives up on his more than once. He gets comfortable. He gets afraid. He thinks about going back to the quiet life he knew. And that, I think, is exactly what makes him feel real.
There is a famous line in the book: when someone really wants something, the whole universe works together to help them get it. It is easy to read that as magic, but it does not have to be taken literally. It makes more sense like this: once a person truly commits to something, they start to notice chances they would have missed before. They talk to the right people, take the small first steps and keep going when it gets hard. Little by little, things begin to fall into place, and doors open that nobody even knew were there. The universe does not do the work. But it does seem to reward the ones who start.
And then there are the detours. Santiago's journey is full of them. He is robbed on his very first day in Africa. He spends almost a year working in a crystal shop instead of crossing the desert. Later, he gets stuck at an oasis because of a war between the desert tribes. At the time, each of these feels like a step backwards. But every problem, every loss and every delay teaches him something he needs later on: patience, trust, how to read the signs around him and how to listen to his own heart. By the end of the story, it becomes clear that none of it was wasted. Not one step.
