The end of the journey (the acomplished dream) will fill your soul with glory.

The journey itself will bring your daily happiness and utility.

When you reach the end of the road you will need a new dream to keep you going ;-)

So…enjoy the journey …!! ;-)

You will succeed !!

Iohara

Charlene

I just want you to know that I am fascinated of your ideas and your writing style. Thank you for sharing your talent to the rest of us who enjoy your visual description of the places, people, and situations depicted in your fictions. I love reading your books, but these two are my favorite: Like a flowing river, & By the river Piedra I sat down and wept.

Thank you and may you find more and more inspiration and meaning to the creations around you.

May the Lord bless you today and always!

Sincerely,

Charmaine

Thank U
Much love*

Yesterday I was rather troubled, as I have been struggling for quite some time now to make this one dream of mine a reality – to open a yoga studio. Over the past couple of months, everything has been falling into place. I even managed to rent a space (though one in need of much renovation), and at this very same moment, a couple of students appeared, as if from thin air, not in response to any advertising – I hadn’t gotten around to that yet – suddenly, they were just there. But now a month has passed since I rented the space, and I’ve gotten an accurate assessment of what it will take to accomplish the renovations: at minimum, a couple of thousand dollars, money which I do not have. So, since I wanted to rid my land of the pines that are growing on it anyway, I decided to sell the timber to use the money for the studio.

First there were rains; it was too wet. Then there were issues about how to get the timber out – a logging team with a special truck was required. One obstacle after another, but each of these I overcame. The ground dried up, I found the right loggers, but now, the bottom has completely dropped out of the timber market. The wood, I find out, will bring next to nothing. At this point, I am in a corner: rent is due, I am paying for a space that is not suitable as it is, and which I cannot afford to renovate. I took every risk, I tried every resource, I had every faith that somehow it would all work out, that somehow it would all come together in the end.

Yesterday afternoon, all my resources were exhausted. With the rent due again in two days, and no funds on the horizon, there was nothing to do but accept that this is NOT MEANT TO BE. So, I said to myself, Maybe there is some other way of looking at this: maybe there is something else that I am meant to do, some other form that this dream is meant to take:

In this moment, I think I have arrived, like the man in the story, at the point where I am borrowing the cow to feed the cat who was borrowed to eat the rat who was gnawing my second set of clothes – my dream is still my dream come true, but it is metamorphizing beyond my control, becoming something other than what I expected, taking on a form other than what I initially conceived. Of course, I can totally renounce the dream, just as the man in the story could have easily become frustrated at a certain point, packed up his one set of clothes and climbed down off of the mountain, declaring, “Forget this! I’m just going home.” But he didn’t. His approach was more fluid than that – he allowed the dream to take on a life of its own. He allowed it to become, not what he insisted it “should be,” but what it was “meant to be.”

So, with that in mind, I realize that there are two variables that I have not yet played with: one is time, the other is place. Maybe it is not time to do this yet. Maybe I need to back off a bit – spend my summer engaged in something else (sign up for yoga intensive, maybe make that walk to Santiago) – then try it again in the fall. Or maybe my house is a better location. I can easily afford to give up one room in order to turn it into a practice studio, the accomplishment of which would cost almost nothing. And then there is the whole green yard – a perfect spot for outdoor yoga, which many people prefer.

I don’t know what the answer is yet, but I just know that sometimes we have dreams and those dreams DO get out of hand – they take on a life of their own and lead us down roads that we never would have considered, much less expected to travel. So, faced with an obstacle that absolutely will not budge, I am forced to seek out another path, one that goes around it. I’m not going to let that cat starve for the sake of my sanctity – I’ll go down and borrow the cow…and then I’ll wait, and see what transpires tomorrow.

Something tells me that I should be feeling disappointed right now – I should be crying because my dream (as I conceived of it) is going down the drain. But I don’t feel that way. Actually, I feel quite excited. I woke up this morning with a keen sense of anticipation – like the kind I experience when reading a good novel – wanting to know, What happens next? Something is happening – I can feel it – and it’s definitely not happening according to the plan that I had laid out. Nonetheless, I feel certain that everything is happening for a reason – that even the immovable obstacles are there to send me off in the right direction. I can’t guess at the outcome, I don’t know exactly where I’m headed, but I am certain that all is exactly as it should be.

Thank you, Paulo, for this wonderful story, and the insight that it has offered me.

With much love!
Savita

while the theme of your ‘story’, the first para, is ‘cool’, the story which follows is also good but the last para is …..

the man was able to transform his dreams into reality? but he never dreamt of any of what happend, it was just as things unfolded, in fact the chaps’ dream was to mediatte in peace, but did he have that, what he ended up with was a business.

love
aditya