Perhaps the most beautiful story I’ve ever read was that of a boy named Santiago. The name of the story is The Alchemist, written by Paulo Coelho. As a shepherd that wanders the plains of Andalusia with his sheep, Santiago gave up an education at the seminary in favor of traveling the world. However, shepherding limits him to only seeing the fields of Andalusia. One night, when sleeping in an old abandoned church with a sycamore tree growing out of the sacristy and his sheep nearby, Santiago dreams of a child telling him to travel to the Great Pyramids of Egypt; there he will find treasure of immeasurable worth. Santiago consults a number of people about his dream, including a mysterious king, Melchizedek, who encourages him to sell his sheep and pursue his dream, saying that, “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
And Santiago does what I believe many people would not; he sells his sheep and embarks on a journey that will ultimately take several years in order to realize his destiny, his “Personal Legend,” as the king calls it. What Santiago does in this instance may very well strike us as irresponsible and impulsive, but what if he had not done as the king instructed? Would he be left wondering--as so many people are about their chosen paths in life--what could have been? Perhaps this question could be answered with Santiago’s simple yet beautiful thought, that “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting” (6).
Santiago’s journey takes innumerable twists and turns, and sometimes, despite the king’s words, it doesn’t seem that all the universe is conspiring in helping him to achieve his dream. In fact, upon his arrival in Africa, he is robbed of all the money he had from selling his sheep. Upon this misfortune, another insight strikes him: now that he has nothing to lose, he is truly free. Of course, it is not unique to Santiago to happen upon such a realization. Philosophers, theologians, writers, and common people alike have come to this conclusion time and time again, that to detach from material things may be the most liberating experience one can have.
However, Santiago now needs to earn some money in order to get across the great desert that stands between him and the Great Pyramids, where his treasure lies. He finds work at the shop of a crystal merchant. Here he learns Arabic, so that he may converse with the merchant, as well as with the customers. He brings about many improvements to the store, with a creative outflow of ideas that ultimately increases business exponentially for the merchant. Another insight is thus brought to Santiago, that “everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.” By generating and implementing new ideas in the crystal merchant’s shop, Santiago has brought not only more business, but inspiration to the merchant’s life and thus changed the world in this small yet profound way.
Upon raising enough money for the journey, Santiago is again faced with the fear of failure. Again, he fears making mistakes, which brings about another important lesson to be gleaned from the Alchemist. Making mistakes is part of life. Is it then worth it to go back to where one began, because one did not have the courage to say “yes” to life? He contends that it is not, and sets off on a caravan across the vast desert, whereupon he meets not only the Alchemist of the book’s title, but also the love of his life, a girl named Fatima, at an oasis. In realizing his true love for Fatima, Santiago happens upon a few beautiful insights.
Firstly, he realizes that “Love is not to be found in someone else but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person.” Secondly, he realizes that: “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” The Alchemist also shares his wisdom with Santiago, teaching him not only alchemy, but how to listen to his heart, and that “No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it” (167).
Santiago then traverses the final stretch of the desert on his own, listening to his heart in search of his treasure. He gets in sight of the pyramids of Egypt, and having the overwhelming urge, he begins to dig. Sometime in the middle of the night, some tribal warriors happen upon him and ask him for money. Santiago is robbed a second time, and then brutally beaten and interrogated as to why he is digging in the first place. Santiago, at the brink of death, finally cries out that he is digging for buried treasure, to which one of the warriors responds:
"You're not going to die. You'll live, and you'll learn that a man shouldn't be so stupid. Two years ago, right here on this spot, I had a recurrent dream, too. I dreamed that I should travel to the fields of Spain and look for a ruined church where shepherds and their sheep slept. In my dream, there was a sycamore growing out of the ruins of the sacristy, and I was told that, if I dug at the roots of the sycamore, I would find a hidden treasure. But I'm not so stupid as to cross an entire desert just because of a recurrent dream."
And indeed, Santiago doesn’t die. Rather, he gets up and laughs, because now he knows where his treasure is.
