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I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho for my neighborhood book club and to tell you the truth, I’m glad it was chosen because I don’t think I would have picked it up otherwise.

When I first opened it up and glanced through the blurbs, I groaned because three of those blurbs mentioned how it was like The Little Prince, which I did not like.  Oh great!  While reading, I could definitely see the similarities but because I actually understood the message of The Alchemist much better than The Little Prince (I can’t even recall what that message was supposed to be anymore), I liked it.  But I do wonder, if I had not just read The Little Prince would I have still liked it?  I’m not entirely sure.  But I’m not really averse to self-help books, so I didn’t really mind this one.  Hmm. . . . still deciding. . . . yes, I liked it.  Why?  It really made me think about some things in my life in a way a book hasn’t done for a really long time.  Like a call to action.

The Alchemist is a fable about following your dreams.  In this fable, Santiago, a shepherd follows his inner yearnings to travel, but wants to see more.  After having a dream about finding treasure in the Pyramids of Egypt, he contemplates seeking after it.  After meeting a gypsy woman and an old man who advise him to follow his dream, he leaves his homeland of Spain and sets off across the desert to the Pyramids.  While searching for his treasure, he learns about love, loss and the feelings of his heart.

The copy that I read had a forward written by Paulo Coelho himself.  Honestly, if I had not read that forward I would have thought that this book was over the top.  But because Paulo had written so plainly about the story and what it was about, I didn’t mind the fact that everything was so obvious, not to mention really weird, in the story.

Paulo Coelho states:

What is a personal calling?  It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth.  Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend.  However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream.

Why do we not achieve our dreams?  Paulo Coelho says that there are four obstacles standing in our way.

1. We are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible.  We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt.
2. Love.  We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursure our dream.  We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward.  We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.
3. Fear of the defeats we will meet on the path.  We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on old excuse; ‘Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.’  We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal callling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey.
4. The fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives. . . . The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt.  We look around at all those who have failed to get what they and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either.

This book really opened up a lot of discussion when we met at book club as we all opened up to our goals in life.  Mine?  I have a secret to confess.  The entire time I was in college pursuing my degree in Photography, I felt like a fraud.  Like everybody else were the real photographers and I was just there for the ride.  Don’t get me wrong. I am creative.  I really felt like I did some great projects.  “Seeing” the photo comes very natural for me while the execution of the photo was difficult.  This came mostly because I had a hard time with the numbers. and the calculations.  The light meter was my worst enemy.  It just didn’t seem natural to be holding a light meter.  I HATED my studio/portrait photography class because I could not calculate how all the lights were supposed to be set up.  The first time I was introduced to a large format 4×5 camera, I thought I would die.

Which seems funny looking back on it now because I chose for my HUGE senior project to photograph flowers in the studio with lights I hated using a large format 4×5 camera (think of those cameras where people are under the big black cloth).  While it was very technical and hard for me, I succeeded.  I think I chose to do it that way because I had to prove to myself that I could do it, despite being scared and feeling very inadequate.  And I loved the finished project.  In fact, the whole thing is hanging on my living room wall.  Every time I look at them, I tell myself, wow, that was hard.  I did it!  The studio didn’t kill me.  The lighting came out great.  The exposures were spot on.  The Polaroid emulsion lifts were a success.  My matte cutting skills were impeccable.  And my frames came out great (which I cut and assembled myself, including cutting the glass).

Anyways, the point?  I graduated with my photography degree about five years ago.  What am I doing with my photography now?  If you don’t count taking photos of the kids (which I do) than I’m not doing anything.  Why?  I’m scared that someone is going to discover that even though I went to school and have my BFA degree in photography, someone is going to discover that I’m not a real photographer.  Isn’t that crazy?!  Which is why I will never say yes to photographing a wedding.  Ever.  I’m scared that I’ll look like I have no clue what I’m doing.  And sometimes I feel like that’s true.

So the whole following your dreams and the obstacles that get in the way really resonated with me.  And I wasn’t the only one.  In my book club, one woman wanted to start a online business, another wanted to publish a local magazine, and another, well, she wanted to have sex with a certain vampire.  But let’s not count that shall we.

So what about you?  Do you have something that you feel is one of your life callings but feel that any of those obstacles listed above get in the way?

There were a lot of great quotes from The Alchemist. This post has already gotten so long and I’ve picked out so many, I’ll go ahead and do up a second post:  Quotes from The Alchemist.

Links of interest: Maw Books Alchemist book review, Paulo Coelho website.
Genre: Fiction, Fable
Publisher: Harper Collins. April 25, 2006. (Original publication 1988)
Paperback, 208 pages. ISBN 0061122416
Source copy: Own
The Alchemist is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

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