“When
you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
This
is the famous
quote found in the story, The
Alchemist, a famous book written by
a Brazilian named Paulo Coelho. In this
book Paulo presents a simple life of a shepherd boy who followed his “dream”
even if it meant to abandon his family and disregard his own emotion.
I
admire how Santiago,
the protagonist, pursue his desire to travel and how his father understands
him. Being poor is not a reason why we should stop dreaming. Big things happen
because someone had dreamed about doing them. In this book, the author shows
that each person has a great part in helping us achieve our dreams may we not
know it but we meet different people who play important role for us to realize
our dreams.
Santiago became a shepherd so he could realize his dream to
travel. Every person that he met in the story seems to know he would be
successful. When he visited a fortune
teller to consult his recurring dream, the fortune teller made a deal that he
should give 1/10 of his wealth then he immediately agreed thinking that it was
just for fun.
He
wanted to go to Africa to visit the
pyramid and find the treasure. He sold some of his cattle’s so he could have the money
for his journey in Africa. Someone fooled him
and left him with nothing. He worked with a merchant and when he had enough
money he left the store and continue his journey to the pyramid.
On
their way, they stopped in an oasis and had an encounter with Arabs. He saved
the villagers when he told them his premonition. He was given gold. He met a
girl in the oasis and promised that he would come back for her. He went to the
Alchemist and they had a journey together going to the pyramid. The alchemist taught him things which are
impossible for him to do, but he was about to do them, like turning himself
into a wind.
He
reached to the pyramid and met a robber who got his gold and money and left him
nothing. This robber told him that he’s stupid about following his dream since
he also had the same dream about a treasure buried somewhere near a tree at the
back of the chapel in Spain. Then at this moment, Santiago immediately went home and dig the
treasure in the place described by the robber. He found a box of treasure of
different types. He then went back to the fortune teller and gave him 1/10 of
the wealth he found and went back to Africa to
fulfill his promise to Famita.
This
story is a good example of having big dreams, and working hard to get them.
Sometimes, no matter how hard we try sometimes we couldn’t just get what we
wanted for the universe works together for us to realize our dreams. With this
I believe that everything happens for a reason, but we don’t have the skills to
understand all reasons, sometimes we just think we got lucky but we actually
got something that was a product of interconnections from all the people we
meet.