The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
Dec 1, 2017
The Lesson I Have Learned from The Alchemist
A few years ago, I heard about a soccer player who said that he plays soccer during the day and then talks about it with his friends to see if they can play better; he also said that he even has dreams about soccer when he is asleep, and wants to become the best soccer player in the world. Because he wanted to make his dream come true. When we have a dream or a plan to achieve, we should focus and follow it. According to The Alchemist, a novel written by Paul Coelho, if we pursue a dream we really want to achieve, everything in the universe helps us to reach it. Paul Coelho shows us the protagonist of the novel named Santiago who has a dream to find a treasure that is close to the pyramids of Egypt. He faces some people and some omens that seemed like obstacles but the actual favor and help him to achieve his dream; for example, Fatima is one of the people who seemed like an obstacle but she helped Santiago to reach the pyramids. Actually, the treasure in Egypt is an omen and a way for Santiago to get his personal legend. He decides to take a journey and accept dangerous situations, threats, and sometimes uncertainty because he does not want to forget his dreams. He could stay in his country and continue doing his job as a shepherd. He could accept his father’s advice and stay in his native country and study theology so that he becomes protected from dangers that may happen in an unknown way. The Alchemist novel identifies important points and life lessons such as accepting the risks and dangers in life to overcome them, trying hard for the dream instead of constantly thinking about it, and living in the present and enjoying life. These lessons can help people to find themselves and try to make their dreams come true.
For achieving a valuable thing, people should face the risks and problems at some point in their way to success, and never give up. Maybe some people think life is a way that has many obstacles to accept and solve, but life actually can be defined as the time we spend to suffer and trying to solve the problems and obstacles. In other words, life would be boring and worthless if it was an easy time that passes by with fun and permanent peace; our problems build and create our lives, so we should accept them and try our best to win. According to The Alchemist, if Santiago did not decide to take his journey to achieve his treasure in the pyramids, and meet the Englishman in Al-Fayoum, he would never succeed in attaining their desires. Santiago gets his treasure on the first day after arriving in Tangier where he loses all of his money and becomes forced to work in a crystal shop for a year and earn money to continue his journey. Santiago accepts the event that has been happened to him and tries to find a solution to become released from the situation he is in. He does not give up and keeps dreaming about the treasure. Likewise, when I was young, I lost a lot of my money in the stock market; I was truly upset for a long time. I accepted it and did not give up, and started to build my life. We should not accept that everything is over whenever we face some obstacles; we should try another way to solve our problems. To be successful and happy, we should not be afraid of the problems and changes that occur to us. We should accept and deal with them to come up with a solution and solve them.
The other lesson that can be learned from the novel is that we should stop dreaming constantly about our goal and start working and trying hard for it. Every person has his or her own dream or personal legend in life, but the person who takes action to achieve the goal becomes successful. In a part of the novel, when Santiago works in the crystal shop, the crystal merchant tells Santiago that he had a dream to go to Mecca to the pilgrim, but he has never taken the action to go there. This is a comparison of Santiago and the merchant; Santiago comes up with a dream, decides to reach it, and tries his best even though he comes up with many problems on his way; however, the merchant comes up with a dream but has never started his way towards the goal and he never will, so he fails in reaching his dream. Similarly, I used to have a friend who always wanted to become a painter and set up a gallery of his artworks, but he never started to paint; whenever he was asked about why he does not start painting as a serious profession, he always talked about how he is unable and not as talented as others, and made excuses like the lack of time and energy. He was afraid of starting and failing, but I kept telling him that failures are not the things that he should be afraid of, and just like Franklin D. Roosevelt once said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” My friend wasted a lot of his precious time, and I never saw a completed painting representing his success in his life during the time we and our other friends used to hang out together. Therefore, for earning anything in life, we should try and persistently follow our dreams. Based on what Paulo Coelho teaches the readers of the book, all the energy in the universe helps people who actually work and try their best to achieve their dreams.
While dealing with our problems and difficulties, we should never forget to live in the present and enjoy our time. There are always wrong definitions of life in people’s minds. Some people, who usually are the ones who suffer and try to create a better living situation for themselves, think that life is the time when they stop suffering and in other words, they reach their goals; however, they are absolutely wrong. One of the important lessons in the novel is indicated at the end of the story. After all of the adventures and obstacles, Santiago figures out that the treasure he was looking for is not located in Egypt and it is actually in his homeland, Andalusia; Santiago understands that the times that he has spent while traveling to Egypt were very valuable, and all of those problems help him a lot. Santiago learns that all of that adventure has been an important part of his life that he should have enjoyed. In a similar way, my wife and I used to have an apartment in our country, Iran. We wanted to buy a bigger apartment, but we had to deal with a lot of difficulties for a couple of years to reach our goal. Finally, we could buy our desired apartment; after a while, we started to buy new furniture and TV and planned on other changes, but we suddenly understood that we have won a green card and now have the opportunity to immigrate to the United States. We had to leave our apartment and never live in it again, and come to the US and start a new adventure. My family and I learned that we should not have been very stressed about the apartment and enjoy every second of our lives because nothing is predictable in life. Life exists every second and some people ignore them and only think about the future; they do not know that life is the moment right now that they are trying. Life is never going to be without problems. They should consider the time they are worried about the times that are never predictable. We should all live in the present and enjoy every second of our lives.
Readers can learn many lessons from The Alchemist novel; the most important ones are to accept and deal with the problems we face, try our best and work hard and not just dream about our goal, and live in the present and enjoy life. Life is a strange thing and people have different definitions about it; some of them are right but some of them are wrong, and that makes them not have a good life. Some people are so scared of problems but problems are going to teach us different lessons. Some people are procrastinators or very hopeless in achieving their dreams; they should know that they have to start working and never give up. Also, some people do not enjoy their life and only wait for the future, but they should know that life is unpredictable. These lessons are very important and lead people to have a happy life and be successful in reaching their dreams.
