Last night, I finished reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. This was the first fictional book I’ve read in a long time and, once I started getting into the story, I remembered how much I enjoy quality fiction. Here is a brief synopsis followed by my thoughts on the book.
The story follows a shepherd boy who loves to travel and finds out about a treasure near the Egyptian pyramids. Once he’s sure he wants it, he sells his sheep and sets off on a journey to find the treasure. Along the way, he ends up in a variety of new situations and has a lot of interesting interactions with all kinds of people. He periodically hits an obstacle or difficult situation that throws him for a loop and, on occasion, demoralizes him; he spends a lot of time in one particular situation without much interest in looking for something else to do or resuming his search for the treasure. No matter what, though, he always manages to return to his journey and make progress toward his goal, even if his path sometimes goes all over the place.
Reading The Alchemist felt like seeing everything I’ve learned over the past few years about self-improvement and pursuing dreams come to life through this story. I especially liked how Coelho showed that the path to our best life isn’t always straight and that sometimes we have to stay in one place or even appear to regress before we can move forward again. If there were one book that would sum up my thought processes and approach to life, this would be it. Check out a short story from the book called “The Secret to Happiness”; if you liked it, then you’ll probably like the rest of the book as well. I’m glad I read The Alchemist and I’m looking forward to returning to it from time to time for some motivation as I pursue my dreams.