The Alchemist…

I do not usually read motivational fiction. But there was a reason I took this one up. It had more to do with the timing actually…I wrote Common Admission Test for the IIMs this year. And I scored 99.53 percentile overall. But I didn’t get any calls because I flunked in DI with an 80. Obviously, I was dejected. In fact, I was stunned. Because, after all, I had still performed well. And more so because I didn’t have the plan number 2 ready. I had put a lot of effort into this single thing.

After that, there was a long period of stillness and of introspection. I was suddenly in the middle of nowhere. Finally after a good amount of introspection, I decided to start my second phase of self construction.

Just when it started, I heard one of my friends suggesting ‘The Alchemist’ to another saying that it was a book that taught something new each time it was read and, as I said, because of the timing of that conversation, I, too, decided to take it up for reading. Of course I was not expecting this book to teach me how to make gold out of lead (as in how to convert this rejection of mine into something like a blessing in disguise). But my repeated shortfalls on my own expectations were forcing me to introspect if I was really on the right track. So, just the way a drowning man would cling to even a floating leaf, I thought why not to see what the world renowned motivator, the Crystal Award winner (from the world economic forum) and Frances Legion d’Honneur has to teach. And whereas this book didn’t teach me anything that I didn’t believe in already, it did bring me a new hope. It did bring a smile on my face. It did tell me that there is a storyteller with the power to inspire nations, who believes in the power of dreams, who is trying to tell the people around the world to wake up and take that arduous journey in pursuit of their dreams.

This tale of a boy, by Paulo Coelho, who takes an arduous and uncertain journey in the pursuit of his dreams and who loses everything he has, twice, but still keeps his faith in himself and the guiding omens, seems to go far from reality at times. There are things and situations in it that would convince a reader of the second kind to take it for a grandma’s tale of fiction and ‘emerge’ out of this inspirational tale ‘unscathed’.

Let me first mention the two kinds that I just classified the readers into:

1. One who have the dreams and ambitions and have the motivation and will to try to achieve them
2. And the other who may or may not have dreams but certainly lack the motivation and will to shape their destiny.

I felt that the people of the second kind would, in all probability, miss the inspiration in this tale. It’s because they never believe in the will power of a man. It’s because they are convinced that there are things that only the people destined and directed by the divine have to take up. It’s because they believe in their limitations and give it the name of practicality. It’s because they don’t realize that good omens come from nowhere but the outcomes of previous efforts of the self.

But the people of the first kind would benefit from this book in the way that it would embolden their confidence to take risks, their faith in themselves and strengthen their desire to pursue their dreams against all odds. This tale would provide them with numourous examples to relate with situations in their own journey towards the realization of their dreams. Most such people, over the period of time, learn to trust their instincts. This tale would strengthen their trust in their instincts which are nothing but kind of omens for those who wish to believe in the single soul of the world (the single guiding force).

The same is ‘maktub’ for all…but the difference is…some realize it and most miss it…