31 lessons from The Alchemist that will coin you.
Some lessons refined my beliefs while others cemented them. Buckle your wits up for this read.
The Alchemist. A book that acts as perhaps the most-suitable metonym for the word ‘intuition’. For those of you that are into pedantry, I assure you that this article will further elaborate on what would satiate your appetites. Back in 2017, statistics encompassing 123 countries showed that around 2.2M books are published annually. In correlation with ‘The Alchemist’, I would venture and state that it would be phantasmagorical for even two thirds of those published books to push for what the book had astronomically achieved. With 150M+ sold copies worldwide, 115 international prizes and awards, and being translated into 80 languages, the success the book attained crushed the majority of its rivals in the books’ industry.
I was and still am fascinated by the rational discourse the messages in the book offer to the reader. Some even offered as revelations. Given the current global circumstances, even unicorns would consider people who offer such context as fabled species. In my opinion, it is always a hack to include leapers in your close circle. People who assuage the intensity of thoughts and actions that require you to take risks. And what is life without risk-taking? A dull-null void? Well, that’s another message that Santiago embodied and conveyed to the reader. Coming across that, I absolutely love the people that embody the messages they would like to transmit to the world. That is where I think that irrelevant of a person’s awareness of what message he would want to convey, you would not need a seer to foretell that his existence in itself would imply a certain message that would feed around. Bearing that in mind, watch your social interactions attentively, where the dose decides the poison.
Moving forward, this article does not wish to address the book as a vignette of fairy tales. Contradictorily, it envisages that all who read it leave this space by either representing a positive aura or by simply avoiding the unfavorable interactions with goons. However, just as much as I wish to delve into each and every one of the statements you are ought to contemplate below, I am afraid it would steer me in elongating the rubber band more than its capacity. For that sake, I have listed below the quotes that I found most fruitful and of relevance to any reader. Some quotes are merely vocalized thoughts, whereas the other half is extracted from conversations either Santiago or some of the other characters had during the course of events.
Quotes from The Alchemist:
1- ‘Well, I usually learn more from my sheep than from books.’
2- The day was dawning, and the shepherd urged his sheep in the direction of the sun. They never have to make any decisions, he thought. Maybe that’s why they always stay close to me.
3- They trust me, and they’ve forgotten how to rely on their own instincts, because I lead them to nourishment. — Santiago thought about the sheep.
4- It was the time of day when all of Spain slept during the summer. The heat lasted until nightfall, and all that time he had to carry his jacket. But when he thought to complain about the burden of its weight, he remembered that, because he had the jacket, he had withstood the cold of the dawn.
5- It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.
6- That was what made traveling appeal to him. He always made new friends and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
7- ‘What’s the world greatest lie?’ the boy asked, completely surprised. ‘It’s 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. That’s the world’s greatest lie.’
8- To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one. And when you want something all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
9- For her every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.
10- I’m like everyone else — I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.
11- He realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.
12- I just want to dream about Mecca. I’ve already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred stone, the seven times I walk around it before allowing myself to touch it … but I’m afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer to just dream about it.
13- He still had some doubts about the decision he had made, but he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things.
14- We are afraid of losing what we have whether it’s our life or our possessions and property, but this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.
15- They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves. — About the alchemists.
16- It’s only those who are persistent and willing to study things deeply who achieve the Master work.
17- He followed the movement of the birds, trying to read something into it. Maybe the desert birds could explain to him the meaning of love without ownership.
18- One could open a book to any page or look at a person’s hand, one could turn a card or watch the flight of the birds … whatever the thing observed, one could find their connection with his experience of the moment.
A further read for the aficionados reading this article.
Note: A quote from Carl G. Jung that complements the above quote: ‘Emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion.’
19- The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.
20- ‘And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?’ ‘They were looking only for gold. They were seeking the treasure of their destiny, without wanting actually to live out the destiny.’
21- People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them.
22- ‘My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer.’ — ‘Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.’
23- I have discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve.
24- ‘Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?’ ‘Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.’
25- ‘What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the soul of the world tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up.’
26- Every search begins with the beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.
27- It said that the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn.
28- And anyone who interferes with the destiny of another thing never will discover his own.
29- That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.
30- It is we who nourish the soul of the world, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse.
31- ‘This is for you he said.’, holding one of the parts out to the monk. ‘It’s for your generosity to the pilgrims.’ ‘But this payment goes well beyond my generosity.’, the monk responded. ‘Don’t say that again. life might be listening, and give you less next time.’
Now, I hope that the statements you’ve just read weigh as heavy baggage on your neural circuits and shoulders. Some that cause you to twist-and-turn in bed, while the other pushes you to outstretch your deep conversations even further. You see; that is the purpose of reading such books, where words on papers are nothing but tools that await your grant for them to coin you. But remember, it is not necessary that all the statements you read will cement your beliefs, on the contrary, some may very well challenge them. But these provocative insights will speak for ideas that satiate your mind till it’s replete with critical and pivotal thoughts rather than the threat of being engulfed by the global mantra.
Resist so that your interest in improving yourself is not one that matches a dilettante’s interest in Van Gogh or Mozart, let your life not pass-by you in hindsight. Remember, once is a mistake, twice is a decision. Interoception, metacognition, and many more concepts and terms were invented by leading clinical psychiatrists and neuropsychologists, purposefully so that they enable you to find your ashram within yourself. Whet yourself repeatedly, only via that will you find yourself among the rogue and elite.
