A Magical Fable About Following Your Dream

Synopsis:

This is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him.

This story teaches us, as only few can, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path and above all following our dreams.

About The Author:

Paulo Coelho was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. He received numerous prestigious international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France’s Legion d’Honneur. He is a storyteller with the power to inspire nations and to change people’s lives. One of his famous writings is The Alchemist which achieved the status of a modern classic.
“His books have had a life-enhancing impact on millions of people” – The Times

My Review What I have Learned From This Book:

Yes! you read it correct, it’s not my review because I am no one to give feedback on this book. In fact I should say that I have learned a lot from this book. In every person’s life there will be a special book which have a powerful impact on their thoughts. This book is one of that types to me. I still wonder how I wasted so much time without reading this life changing book a long time ago. Thank god at least I read it now before my thoughts crumble me and worrying about what to do next.
Now let’s start talk about my experience with this book:

So first of all, the important thing I have realised is whatever treasure we are dreaming for is available at the place where we stand now. But in order to reach that golden cup we need to work on that very hard. That treasure might be anything like career, love, happiness, wisdom, richness, power etc. Once we are completely aware of our dream and realise what we really want, then the real journey starts. In that process of working hard for what we want, we learn many things which we always think that we know them and didn’t give a thought about them. But we miss the core thing i.e. everything that happen in our life is a signal to identify what we really dream for. In fact these little things shows a way to us, a perfect plan to us, to reach our destiny.

Talking about destiny there is a beautiful line in this book which one should give a thought about it:

There is a book which describes People’s inability to choose their own destinies and everyone ends up believing the world’s greatest lie. And the world’s greatest lie is this: “That at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.”

After reading the above lines, didn’t you guys feel ‘hell yeah! this is what happening to me right now?’ Yes it’s very true and in fact not only your life or my life, it is happening in everyone’s life right now. But we are not realising that. Just think once, If a person riding a bike without a helmet and died in an accident, can we call it as his fate is to die in an accident? Absolutely not, because he could have avoid that accident and live today by wearing that helmet. It’s just a common sense. There are omens in our lives which always warn us about every step we take. In this case wearing a helmet is an omen. These omens exist in every facet of our lives. But we people always take them for granted.

Paulo explained that, everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is and for them everything is clear and possible. But once we started growing up, a mysterious force convince us that it is impossible for us to realize our destiny. But realising one’s destiny is their sole obligation. We people always fear about everything, fear of losing things, our possessions and whatever we constructed in our lives. After all, where these caste, religion, race etc come from. That’s the reason why we give up so easily on everything we want. Because of FEAR. Recently I had a small talk about one of the social constructs called marriage with a friend and now I understood the whole thing. We created that social construct only out of fear about the couple may get separated. But if a person is really committed in a relationship, they don’t need any of these beliefs to prove the bonding between them is strong. I know it’s hard to accept by the entire society because we got habituated to the traditions we are following from long time ago. But it is the real truth. Once we overcome our fear of these things, then we get control over our life. Because, this is our only life and we have a complete right on it.

There are some beautiful lines from the book which made me think about many things:

“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love”

Our heart says “Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”

I don’t want to ruin these beautiful words by defining them in my own words. So, I just directly quoted them from the book. There are much more lines in the book that captivated me completely. But I don’t want to spoil your enthusiasm of reading them on your own. I would definitely recommend this book to each and every one irrespective of their ages.

Finally we just need to remember three things:
1) Listen to our heart
2) Follow our omens
3) Never give up on our dreams

Thank you for your patience in reading my giant post.
Happy reading guys 🙂