The alternative, the ‘If’ only exists before the action is taken. To me, there is only one version of Santiago’s story. It would make no sense to see him stay in the mountains. He would eventually come upon the road he is on now, but through back alleys and only a shadow of the knowledge he gains from his first path.

I think we all love the Alchemist for the path Santiago has taken anyway. His communication with nature, crystal, desert winds, all of it. I wouldn’t want to see Santiago walk a more mundane path. Santiago awoke to the world. He began to feel it as part of him, not as something outside of him.

Santiago lived his Destiny, no point in regretting.
It’s good to sometimes think in if-s, but let the thought pass with the moment. Don’t stick with it.

I also agree with Paulo Coelho & Thelma.

Thanks for your story Savita Vega, I’ll pray for you.

Love,
Melinx.

Santiago should not go back! Certainly he should not follow somebody else’s idea of what his life should look like. I’m a parent too, and as parents, we often think we know what is best for our children. Unfortunately, we are seldom right. In fact, Santiago should never even pause to glance back over his shoulder, for if he does, as Paulo Coelho often warns, he may well turn to a pillar of salt!

That’s where I am now in my life: I am that pillar of salt. I look at it this way, however: If I am still conscious enough to recognize my condition, there is yet hope. There is a way out of here. If I escaped once, with no skills, very little education, and no clue of what I was doing or where I was going, surely I can manage to escape again.

My grandmother, now ninety, is still ill; my dad, still getting older every day. But I cannot live my life for them. I couldn’t fashion my life to please them when I was twenty, and I cannot do it now, for to do so, at least in my case, is deadly. Some would call this selfish. But again, as Paulo says, it is all too easy to blame others for our own failure to follow and accomplish our dreams. I could stay here, harnessed by the notion that, as a single woman, I am obligated to live near and care for my grandmother and my dad. And my grandmother could live to be a hundred! My dad, as well. Then what? By then I’ll be almost seventy, and I’ll still be in the kitchen, making coffee, cooking bacon, making biscuits by hand and muttering under my breath about the dream that got away – complaining that I always wanted to be a writer, always wanted to move to another country, but because of my dad and my grandmother, I never got to follow my dreams.

Social norms, such as the ideas which define the roles we are “supposed” to assume in life (i.e. a single woman is “supposed” to be caregiver to aging family members, not to have a life of her own), they are like stones we willing tie around our own ankles. Then, at the end of our life, we blame someone else for all the things we dreamed of doing but never accomplished. Thus we live, dying while still alive.

Thanks so much for your words of encouragement, Paulo Coelho! Thanks for reminding us NOT TO LOOK BACK, but to follow our dreams – dreams of our own making – wherever they may lead us.

Sincerely,
Savita Vega