I very much enjoyed ‘A life in the Day – of the Boy from Brazil’ in the Sunday Times Magazine today. It was so different from the many famous people who are usually in this column due to the way in which you have shaped your life in reflective way.
Today in the Sunday Times, you are quoted as saying ‘ but there is a high price to pay for being different. I’ve paid a price for being different ……… I’m proud of my scars; they are like medals’.
Why do you think some of us are called to be different and make a difference and suffer the pain that this brings while others are content not to make a difference and therefore do not suffer the pain? Is this linked to our spirituality?
I’m not so sure about your assumption that people content themselves with what society asks of them. Furthermore, I don’t think they are as placid as you think.
Actually in my book The Pilgrimage I talk about this feeling. Indeed, when you abandon your dream, the first feeling that creeps in is a type of calmness, stillness. This is the first indication that something of precious in your soul is dying.
I would say that it is better to feel – completely – the consequences of your fight because these indicate that you are alive.
Of course, sometimes we wish to reduce the pain – and I think this is part of the battle. Ideally, the best would be to reduce the suffering in the realization of our dreams. Hence the need of allies and most importantly of all: faith.
The most beautiful accomplishment in my eyes is to fight with happiness in our hearts. I prefer this immensely more than some type of mild satisfaction of not taking risks.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Bonjour Paulo,
L’idee ” d’etre fier de ses cicatrices – elles sont comme des medailles -” on devient plus tetu ” me plait. Je vais l’adopter pour les miennes. Rien que d’y penser je me sens deja mieux. Merci, Paulo.
Que votre journee soit agreable.
Love
‘A day in my life’, my dear Paulo Coelho. It is so strange how most of our lives, routine, seem the same, phenomenonally, on the surface.
What makes the difference is what is going on in us. Our perception of the World. The richer our Soul is the more …’colours’ and sounds we see around us. Thank you for being there and … prescribing your world in your books. Your beautiful soul.
LOVE,
Thelma
p.s. I am going to Protaras for the day! Spring is already in Cyprus, sunny and warm, with the company of my daughter who has come for the Easter holidays, from England. A happy change in my routine..
It is strange to me that people prefer o to think that our choices or lack of them are some sort of imposition by an higher power this so tells me that people are not ready to carry the weight of their choices and assume responsibility for the consequences .
Everyone has the capacity to create a dream of their own but most simply chose to navigate someone else’s one. A enlightened individual chooses to live is unique dream , and within it still manage to respect social rules and its moral codes without which society would turn into a beastly crowd .
It is always painful in the beginning, to be different but it just becomes easier as one matures in our perceptions of what it is, and what it means to be different.
I am in no quest to be different, just have the responsibility to be true to my soul and the dreams I woven in my mind. And for that I have suffer the looks, whispers, gossips, I was ostracized, outcaste, rejected, it hurt me did not outfaced me.
All evolution started with a dream and the dreamer that made it happen ,and nothing ever evolved out of the accommodated minds and societies that were to afraid to be different.
However the world is full of the ones that presume to be different , because is fashionable and everyone is doing it ,it looks good in your resumé, it enhances your status at parties, etc, but at at a closer scrutiny they are no more than then unchanged sheep in a different color skin in that same old flock.
Love
Milou
when i read ur thoghts Mr. Paulo- i have a feeling that we r sitting together and talking personally about our SAME point of view- i agree with u 10000% when u write the way we should fight with the happiness in our hearts,,, and i feel that this is the way i have achieved in my life,,, i have chosen happiness and i use it as my tool every were, and it makes the different!!! by the way my daughter had a liver transplant 9 years ago,,, and the way she use her scares- she glu tattos on them when she uses bikini- and it looks just sexy!!!
lots of love to all of u
orly
It is so wonderful to read these comments on my question and to know that so many people are fully human and fully alive despite their scars. Also that despite experiencing the pain they also carry a happiness in their hearts. This is most re-affirming.
Thank you Paulo and everyone who have sent their comments and their pearls of wisdom in helping me to continue to follow my dream.
Dear Paulo,
“The most beautiful accomplishment in my eyes is to fight with happiness in our hearts.”
-Yes, indeed. But In addition,
-”Any accomplishment is not fulfilled without true realization of satisfaction in heart and soul.”
-”Life without risk is life wasted.”
-”No aacomplishments are important than self realization of self satisfaction.”
-”Best way to describe life could be suffering from your past or could just be a moment spend with heart full of satisfaction.”
-”Move on, sky is not limit, wind can touch you, water can dip you, mother will care you, wife will nurture you and above all, oneday you will see your child following, up above the sky; you became a star, twinkling, watching and waiting to come back again, on earth.”
God bless you all !
Sometimes the situations around us make us need to fight for what others may possess quite freely.
If you didn’t fight, then where would this lead you? … following the crowd and without a voice.
So… one steps out and moves forward… on their own path. If you are lucky, there is inner strength to carry you forward safely. Otherwise there is opposition and more pain.
Yet to know that you are shaping your own life – as the heart calls – is beyond comparison to a day learning to be ignorant, unexpressive, uninvolved, uninterested!!!
It is worth all the pain to know that you followed your hunch, your intuition, your inner voice…. and took the time to spread YOUR wings.
The world IS big enough for the individual :o/
Is there a way to suffer (to feel pain or anguish) and yet be happy and even content at the same time? I think so. In fact, in my view, the only way to be happy and content in my life is to be open to and fully experience all the emotional and physical extremes. To feel anything intensely, whether it be pain or joy, is to be fully and completely alive.
One can never know the deep sensuality and intense pleasure of food until one has known true hunger, whether incidental (from want) or intentional (in fasting). Sometimes we think to be full is the ideal, but think of sex. Where lies the greatest pleasure – in the satiation of desire, or in the want? Is it during, or after? If one is full all of the time, in any aspect of life, one is lethargic and dull. This is not the definition of happiness, not in my opinion. Give me hunger or a fantastic feast, give me passionate love or a great tragedy, cold or heat – just give me something intense.
And yet even in living intensely, one can know a kind of peace – the “peace that passeth all understanding.” Just because we live these great tragedies, because we pass through this hour of want, or emotional suffering, or physical pain, does not mean that we have to come away scared and embittered. As long as we have faith, as Paulo says – deep and complete faith – we will know and sense, even in our darkest hour, that the Divine is not only with us, upholding us, but that all indeed going according to plan: there is a reason for this. We are meant to take something from it, to gain some insight or understanding, we are meant to grow and evolve and be made better by the experience.
So, there is a way to experience everything – the good and the bad, the joy and the suffering – even to scream out in pain or anguish if we have to, and yet, at the same time, know great happiness in our hearts, even in that very moment. In this way, we become as actors on a stage – feeling our parts, living them out with great intensity and passion, and remaining joyful and content deep within, just happy at the opportunity to play our role to the fullest of its potential.
To choose to follow God, in his faith, can make us feel ourselves terribly alone among the people)(it is not the easiest road); and at the same time enjoy the happiness to smell ” the whole in the whole ” and be filled to feel a set…
for the love , the love of all
and so , we aren’t alone
so love is the more important …it’s the soul of the world