If you’re looking for inspiration, this story brings it in droves. If we follow our own “Personal Legends” we can perform the same magic – turn our ordinary lives into gold, as long as we believe in the journey and don’t give up on what we believe is our destiny.
But throughout the story and the search for the alchemist, I felt like this was more a metaphor for life in general. Now you might ask, what is an alchemist? From what I understood, an alchemist is like a magician chemist who can turn any metal into gold. “Maybe that’s why they give up on it so early, too. “People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being,” said the old man, with a certain bitterness. But he had thrown it with such force that it broke the stone it fell upon, and there, embedded in the broken stone, was the most beautiful emerald in the world. The miner, with all the anger and frustration of his five fruitless years, picked up the stone and threw it aside.
He transformed himself into a stone that rolled up to the miner’s foot. Since the miner had sacrificed everything to his Personal Legend, the old man decided to become involved. The miner was about to give it all up, right at the point when, if he were to examine just one more stone – just one more – he would find his emerald. For five years he had been working a certain river, and had examined hundreds of thousands of stones looking for an emerald. The miner had abandoned everything to go mining for emeralds. The old man related that, the week before, he had been forced to appear before a miner, and had taken the form of a stone. Believing that finding this treasure is his ‘destiny’ he leaves the comfort of home and travels into the African desert to find it. The story is about a young shepherd from the south of Spain who has a recurring dream about a finding a treasure. How have I not heard of it before?! The Alchemist Review: What’s it about? The Alchemist has now sold over 65 million copies – one of the best selling books in history.
He is an advocate of not giving up on your dream, and this message seems to come through in this novel in particular. He was put in a mental institution, escaped, became a hippie and travelled the world, and eventually returned and fulfilled his dream of being being an author. He had always wanted to be a writer, but his parents didn’t allow it. Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian author, and after reading up on him, it seems his life shares some parallels with the story in his book. Rather I will tell you what I liked about the book, what I didn’t, and whether it’s a worthy piece to pick up and read yourself. As for this particular book review of The Alchemist, I’m not going to delve deeply into all the lessons he portrays for us.
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