The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho ,The Lesson I Have Learned from The Alchemist

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.

یادداشت هایی برای دخترم ، آی سودا

The Alchemist

        When I wanted to leave my country, one of my concerns was reading novels that I used to do every day. I promised myself, I will never read any Persian novels unless I become able to read English novels. Last semester I read  "Farewell To Manzanar"and this semester I have read my favorite novel named The Alchemist. Now I feel fantastic and I am looking for time to read Persian novels. 

یادداشت هایی برای دخترم ، آی سودا

Note by Adel Esmaeilpour

Farewell To Manzanar

"Farewell To Manzanar" was the first navel by English edition that I read in during the spring  semester 2017. It was relay wonderful for me, I learned a lot of things about the American history during World War II. I think the best quote in this book is in chapter seven when interrogation asked him what you think about result of fighting between USA and Japan he answers when your mother and father fighting together you want just one thing stop fighting.
there are several source about this book, these links in below are a few of them.

Enrique Freeque's Forum
www.shmoop.com

More Twists , by Burton Goodman

More Twists
18 More Tales That Take a Surprising Turn with Exercises for Comprehension & Enrichment

When my Professor Mrs. Header Stern told us to prepare More Twists book That collected by by Burton Goodman . I never had thought this book attracted me. I have learned a lot from these short stories.

1. "The Interlopers" by Saki
2. "The Last Leaf" by O. Henry
3. "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant
4. "Appointment with Love" by S. Kishor
5. "The Journey" by Charles Land
6. "Thank You, M'am" by Langston Hughes
7. "Sarah Tops" by Isaac Asimov
8. "Louisa, Please Come Home" by Shirley Jackson
9. "A Dip in the Poole" by Bill Pronzini
10. "The Padre's Neighbor" by Manuela Williams Crosno
11. "Dusk" by Saki
12. "The Sin of Madame Phloi" by Lilian Jackson Braun
13. "The Cop and the Anthem" by O. Henry
14. "The Man and the Snake" by Ambrose Bierce
15. "A Mother in Mannville" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
16. "Clothes Make the Man" by Henri Duvernois
17. "Lather and Nothing Else" by Hernando Téllez
18. "Test" by Theodore Thomas

A Mother in Mannville

Jamestown Education

Who is Madiba?

Who is Madiba?

Mandela certainly was one of the great leaders of the 20^th century who was called Madiba by the African people. It is important for us to know what he thought about, what he said, and finally what he did. He was born in a small village in South Africa, he grew up in a royal family, Mandela studied law in Johannesburg; after a couple of years, and he became an Anti-colonial who believed in human equality. Why did I choose Mandela? Because of his behavior after he became president; he lead his nation peacefully and could win; “Forgive, but never forget” he said. Unlikely, after the revolution in my country (Iran), many previous heads of government got executed and many specialists, doctors, and engineers immigrated to Europe or the United States of America.

Recently, many leaders want to become the same as Mandela but they have become dictators. Why does that happen? I think it environment and education has been affecting human traits. Mandela helped his nation to accept and forgive white people who tortured and abused them during apartheid. I do not know what had affected him to be such a peaceful person, but I am sure the environment where he grew up and his family were two of the main reasons.

Mandela was very self-conscious and humble. He led his country to improve and develop in the shadow of democracy and abdication. Unlike his right of running for the presidency for the second time, Mandela decided not to apply for it; On the other hand, there are a lot of leaders who grab and keep the government until the day they die. Mandela supported his substitute president and recommended the leaders of other countries try winning without violence. I think the world accepted the celebration of the World Cup 2010 in South Africa because of respecting him. Mandela is a role model for many people, especially politicians, artists, and athletes. I watched a few movies about him and had read his autobiography in Farsi. I hope someone like Mandela gets to lead my country and bring back freedom and justice. 

Christopher McDougall

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”

Christopher McDougall

A Hard Situation I Have Faced In My Life

It was early in the morning in winter 1990. I was a teacher and a coordinator of a school that only had one teacher beside me. I had to deliver some student documents to an office center in the city to get students' benefit. It was one of my responsibilities and I wanted our students to have all benefits on time. The most important thing was about something telling me that I can do it. My friend and I worked as teachers instead of mandatory soldiers in villages that are so far from the city because the government could not send teachers there. I remember I taught first and second grade at the same time and my friend taught three grades in the same class, some weeks in the morning and some weeks in the afternoon. Three of the village members and I woke up so early that day; they helped me pass the river in the coldest time of the year; so that they can protect me if wolves would attack. Both sides of the river were hardly frozen in a negative 30 degrees (of Celsius) temperature.

I took off my clothes and went into the freezing water so that I can pass it because there was no bridge. The water came up to my stomach fast and hard, so I put the documents on top of my head while the student village members were so worried about me. One of them once told me that he could not talk at all while I was doing that because he was so shocked. We were in a wild valley when I took off my clothes. The ground was covered with snow three feet deep, so I told the students to go back. I had to hike a way that was very hard to even drive on; even tough and big cars could not pass through that way easily. After almost 30 minutes, I arrived and looked around to see some vehicle by any chance. It seemed that I was lucky because I saw a car that came from the city, but it came so slowly because of the snow. When it arrived, it was almost 8:30 AM; there were people from my organization who wanted to interview some of the village members. They told me to stay there or go slowly, and they will be back after almost one hour. I was carrying a tree branch for self-defense as well, but after I got to know those people, I threw it away. Meanwhile everywhere was full of snow, so I followed the car tire prints; I did not have a watch, but I was pretty sure that I was walking for more than an hour. Sunlight reflected from the snow to my eyes, and I could not see anything but whiteness for more than three hours.

 Adrift, I began to look around for a while; they promised me to come after an hour and a half but I spent waiting for more than two hours, however, I never stopped and kept walking while waiting. They never came, but it did not matter anymore because I could finally see the walls of cottages from a far distance away after I arrived in the next half of the way. After that, whenever I explained the story to other people who knew that area, I was told that I was crazy and lucky because walking that way, in that season, for that while, with no wolf appearing is impossible. These illustrated I am in the right way. After spending all those hard times, I am fearless of a lot of things. I feel confident and courageous now and also I feel like a very experienced person who has a lot of stories to share with others. Hardships in life make us the kind of people we are right now.