The Alchemist

Apr 15, 2018
3 min read

How I came across this book: It was always on my list.

Favorite Line from the book:

Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.

When you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth. The universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

The Alchemist central theme revolves around following your dreams. Four obstacles hold us back from fulfilling our dreams – fear instilled during childhood that our dreams are impossible to achieve, fear of defeat, fear that love is holding us back and fear that our dreams may come true and we may not be worthy of it.

The Alchemist is a beautiful novel, which encompasses from reality to the realms of the mystical. The story revolves around Santiago, a shepherd, who listens to his heart and follows his dreams. He quit his parent’s plans of becoming a priest and instead became a shepherd so he can travel the world. He had recurrent dreams of finding a hidden treasure near the Egyptian pyramids. He was not deterred by the fact that the pyramids were thousands of miles away from his home in Andalusia (Southern Spain), and he had no money. He came across a crystal merchant who himself used to dream about traveling and visiting the Mecca but could never gather the courage. The crystal merchant told Santiago that if he completed his pilgrim to Mecca and fulfilled his dream, then he would have no purpose to live for. Santiago worked for the crystal merchant for a year, which helped him learn Arabic and save enough money so he could travel. The crystal merchant signified a contrast to everything that Santiago represented – passion, enthusiasm, and courage to pursue dreams. Santiago traveled the Sahara Desert with a caravan where he met an Englishman who was pursuing his goal to find the Alchemist – a person who can turn lead into gold. In a twist to the plot, Santiago ended up meeting the Alchemist who chose Santiago to be his pupil. The Alchemist told him that Alchemy is about “penetrating to the Soul of the World, and discovering the treasure that has been reserved for you.” Santiago traveled across the desert with the Alchemist to reach the pyramids. He is beaten and robbed by the refugees near the pyramid when he starts digging at a spot near the pyramids to find the treasure. One of the robbers told him that he had recurrent dreams of finding treasure in a ruined church in Andalusia where shepherds slept, but he was not stupid like Santiago to follow his dreams. Santiago could not believe what he heard, and he finally ended up finding the hidden Spanish treasure buried in his own home. In the process of chasing his dream, Santiago travels all over North Africa, met many people who transformed his life and falls in love with a beautiful woman. The concept of personal legend, i.e., purpose, the soul of the world, following the omens, and the principle of favorability (beginner's luck) are discussed at every stage of the novel.

The book has multiple messages – follow your dreams, do not let others dictate your dreams, live in the moment, listen to your heart for intuition, and love is a universal language understood by everyone. I truly believe in finding and pursuing our purpose. However, we should not forget to enjoy the small details of life while pursuing our purpose. We all get intuitions (some call it ‘the gut feeling’) but we are too afraid to follow them. After a while, our heart gets tired and stops giving us intuitions because we chose to ignore them in the first place. There is a famous Native American proverb which sums up the importance of intuition: “Listen to the wind, IT TALKS. Listen to the silence, IT SPEAKS. Listen to your heart, IT KNOWS.” The most important message of the book is that earth has a soul and we are all part of that soul – we are all one! After all, everything came from a tiny molecule 14 billion years ago.