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Are you following your dreams?
Just like you, I even stammered for a moment when I had this question on my mind.
Everyone has a dream, but only a few of us are ready to pursue that dream. The rest of us are trapped under the fear of failure.
The Alchemist is a Fiction book by Paulo Coehlo. It was originally written in Portuguese and was first published in 1988 and translated into English in 1993. It is the story of a boy named Santiago. His parents wanted him to become a priest but he always wanted to become a shepherd so that he could travel to more places. One day he had a dream of getting a treasure under a pyramid. With the help of an old king, the boy intended to search for his treasure. On his way to find the treasure, Santiago met many people including his love, Fathima. Each experience he had in this journey had taught him different life lessons.
So who is the alchemist?
What happened to Santiago's journey?
Did the boy find his treasure?
The novel follows Santiago as he travels to Egypt to follow his Legend (his personal destiny and ultimate dream). He encounters many different people, occupations, omens, and cities along the way. Every coincidence Santiago had on this journey nudged and guided him toward his agenda. But that was a bit unrealistic for me. In my perspective, I always love to learn life lessons from stories, but to be honest this book sounds too preachy to me. I love the story of this book, and the ending impressed me more.
Throughout the novel, there are many messages, values, and philosophical thoughts that we come across but the one that stuck with me is the ‘Language of the World’. We, the readers, discover which language this is and what it entails alongside Santiago. It begins with Santiago realizing that it is one without words, he can understand both his sheep and another individual who doesn’t speak his language. If the universal Language of the World doesn’t have any words, what language must it be?
Throughout his journey we meet people who help him discover aspects of the language, each coming close to what the language is, all entailing things that make this language strong and universal, yet not on the mark.
I learned something different from this novel. Captivating and stupendously uplifting, no book list is complete without this gem. And let me share an endearing quote from the book which is one of a hundred reasons for you to pick it up for your reading list.
This beautiful passage urges us to be more mindful of the present. How we spend our days is quite frankly, how we spend our lives and the quality of our lives does depend on the quality of our days. If happiness is what we’ve been striving for all along, then there isn’t a more helpful, insightful answer than this.
The book also had the theme of finding one's destiny, although according to The New York Times, The Alchemist is 'more self-help than literature'. The advice given to Santiago that 'when you want something to happen, the whole universe will conspire so that your wish comes true' is the core of the novel's philosophy and a motif that plays throughout it. This also connects me with one of Shahrukh Khan’s Bollywood films Om Shanti Om in which he says “It is saying that if you desire something from the heart ... then the whole universe will work towards getting you that”
“If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.” — Paulo Coelho, book The Alchemist
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