When I was young, my parents sent me to a mental institution three times ( 1966, 1967, 1968). The reasons in my medical files are banal. It was said that I was isolated, hostile and miserable at school. I was not crazy but I was rather just a 17-year-old who really wanted to become a writer. Because no one understood this, I was locked up for months and fed with tranquilizers. The therapy merely consisted of giving me electroshocks. I promised to myself that one day I would write about this experience, so young people will understand that we have to fight for our own dreams from a very early stage of our lives.
When I realeased “Veronika decides to die”, a book that was a metaphor of my experience in a lunatic asylum, the press started asking me if I forgave my parents. In fact, I did not need to forgive them, because I never blamed them for what happened. From their own point-of-view, they were trying to help me to get the discipline necessary to accomplish my deeds as an adult, and to forget the “dreams of a teenager” .
Khalil Gibran has an excellent text about parents and children:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
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Estimado Señor,
Es admirable ver la fortaleza de su espíritu, más admirable aún es que su perseverancia lo haya llevado al sitio donde esta. Gracias por compartir con nosotros sus vivencias y por dejarnos aprender de ellas.
Natalia Franco.
Ecuador
I am touched by how strong and brave you have been! I am so glad that you were able to follow your heart. I, with so many others in this world, love your work.
Thank you for sharing this! It’s so true!
I’m 22 years old. Since I read my first book, as a child, I’ve been dreaming of becoming a writer. I’m having a couple of years off studying, trying to figure out what I am suppose to do with my life. Many of my friends and family members think my choice of putting my education on hold for a while is a stupid idea. “Why don’t you just study something, like a language or a year-study? Just do something!” they ask me constantly. They believe my choice of putting my education on hold will make it harder for me to finally start studying. I feel the opposite. And why do I have to do things the same way as everyone else? Why do I have to put myself into a little box, struggling to be someone I’m not? Today I was talking to my mum’s Uncle. And he told me something very wise: “The world has become a institution. People is forced into routines they don’t fit into. That makes them miserable, tired, and they loose the will to work and live life. Be who you are, do things in your own tempo.” This year I have no plan for tomorrow. I take each day as it comes. I don’t know where I am next week. Maybe I have some work, maybe I have the week of. Maybe I am visiting some friends. Maybe I’m at home, watching TV.
I’ve always been the type of girl showing up at school every single day, doing all my homeworks, saying what is expected. Always known where, what and how for a year ahead. My life has been planed from year to year. Last year I got so tired of all my plans and of being so focused on what was expected of me, in the end I had to get a sick-leaf from work, I only cried and slept. This year I have tried to plan as little as possible, and I feel more free than I have ever felt before in my life. I’m doing things in my own tempo, things I want to do, and not what everyone else says I have to.
Veronika decides to die, is the best book I’ve ever read. Thank you for writing this book! The story really opened my eyes, life is not a plan, it is to be honest with yourself and your own thoughts. Everyone is different, what’s right for me, may not be right for my sister or brother, mum or dad. Everyone has to find they’re own path.
Anne Severine
Norway
Hello Anne,
What you’ve wrote here reminds me what my father said to me when I was 14: “Don’t be slave of the routine in which people are used to live… Free yourself, find your own way to achieve things. Look at Colombus, he didn’t needed directions, neither I do, nor you… so do what really, truely want to do!!”
He also used to narrate me histories of greatest persons ever exist in humans life like Alexander, Genghis Khan, Colombus, etc… They all have one thing in common he said: “they looked beyond people dreams.”
God bless him, I do love him so much. When I read Mr Coelho blog, I always think of him. God bless Mr Coelho too.
I understood the real meaning what he want it to tell me a few years later. Now I’m 23 and I decide to take a break and stop my studies for awhile to travel around the world. This is the only way I can find myself and think about what I’ll do next.But now, I’m hungry of learning about people lifes and theirs cultures, discover how they exist. So I want to make this dream come reality !
And yes unfortunately, we can’t escape from peoples critics… beginning from my madre ! But I’m confident and I’ll overcome every single problem and do what I want do.
Mohamed M. Rayaleh
Djibouti
Sr. Gracias por escribir historias que me deleitan la existencia.
Su obra es excelente, gracias.
Thank you very much Paulo for sharing that story with us. Not always an easy subject to discuss especially when we dont even know ourselves why the confinement happened. Creative people whose minds work beyond normal understandings and as Einstain said, people of spirit beware of the abuse from people of mediocre minds…..
Locked away by people who by western standards of medicine do not even know how 10 persent of the mind works. Who pop pills into the bodies of spirited people who chose not to live their lives in a box. People of open mind and life that western medicine refuses to accept….. People of creativity and clairvoyance who are locked up and labeled as crazy….
I have seen too much of this….
It is time that we spoke up and experssed our true natures and find ourselves around people like us who work beyond ‘normal’ human perseption….. Who over the years become withdrawn because no one around can understand them, or speak and never be understood……
Thank you for bringing this subject forward to make people feel pride in their sprituality and inner wisdom…..
I have witnessed people of wisdom in hospitals like this whose perseptions and visions needed just a little bit of understanding by the western world for them to open up and blossom into spiritual human beings…. People who hungered and understood spiritual knowledge that western medicine refused and failed to understand……
Muito obrigado mais uma vez Paulo ….God Bless
si, esto es una realidad yo como padre tengo q cambiar de actitud solo debo dar mas amor
I know a beautiful girl that had her breasts badly burnt as a child. After the first time we made love she asked me if I had felt anything special and she put my hand between her breasts and I felt the burns. We had made such passionate love so my hands had not sensed that, but now she showed me and she was still beautiful. The only thing I had felt when we made love was how perfect she was. She loves me touching and kissing her lovely but scared breasts.
She told me the story that when she was a child of 2 her mother placed a bowl of hot goulash on the table. As mothers are often stressed by all around them and other children picking for attention she turned away for seconds. As a 2 year old child with hunger do, she reached for the bowl that tipped over her and burned her so badly that her nylon clothes stuck to her body. She had to stay at hospital for 2 months but recovered fine.
She knows that her mother has blamed herself all these years but she has never blamed her mother for this freak accident. She is now a strong women with great pride in her self and her body.
Following a badly car accident on the 1st of January of last year,i was left with a very bad leg.Scarred, not able to walk long distances and only with crutces, a very bad limp and pain.I spent two months in hospital as well and had,and still need further interventions. I feel handicapped and ugly.,and can t come to terms with my mangled leg.
This story gives me hope., That yes., sure.there is more into me than my legs. I want to feel wanted…and i want to love and be loved.
You are a great spokesman of all of us in this beloved country, Brazil, Paulo! I’m so proud of having writers like you representing our country, with this deep soul and ready to share all your incredible experience with all the human beings of the world!… I used to read that poem of Gibran Khalil Gibran when I was a teen and it was a great pleasure to read it again here, strongly linked to your intense passage when young. The best thing on it all is that despite all the misfortunes you had (and maybe just because of that, why not?) the humanity could receive a wonderful gift from Life: the fantastic writer named Paulo Coelho. Congrats for all your work!
My daughter has decided to return to our home country. Living with my parents and to be close to my family. For me she is all the family I need and I could happily travel the world. For her it was not the same and though I tried to make her see the beauty the world has to offer all the opportunities and the freedom she has, she was content on being home and surrounded by cousins and grandparents and all the problems that only a huge family brings. Living in a country where public transport is a dangerous option, endangering herself yet she is happy.
She is living her dreams and doing what makes her happy. I on the other hand am alone, I do not feel lost without her but I miss her with all my heart and often I just sit in her room alone and wonder about her and where all this will lead to. Should I return as well to be with her even though this is where I want to be. I know that I have to keep the faith and trust in God that she will be fine and that she needs to follow her heart and do what is right for her and that I have to stop thinking of her as my baby girl. Sooner or later she would have chosen to go out into the world and want to discover herself, live her dreams. In the meanwhile I will have to sit back, help where I can, offer advice and give guidance…………… Being a parent is tough but truly a blessing.
parents, i love u, i respect u, but that dont mean that i live my life with your way, treat my problems with your sollutions, u are my support, my energy to realise my dream, u push m to do it, i need your help to be what i want to be,not what you hope.
i am bereft of words.
i wanted to praise you for the beautiful thoughts you have shared to the world.
but that is not enough.
for your writing has given me more than just an inspiration to continue to try and become a good parent. it woke me up.
i must learn now to respond with a more resolute Love to the reason and purpose for which i was placed in this world. to question God as little as possible. and even if my dreams might have escaped, i must teach my children to catch their own.
I wish people that don’t have the ability to get your books in any language they read; know how unfortunate they are as they are missing so much inspirations, emotions, enlightening, enchantment,and many more amazing breath taking supercity in your books.
Thank you for being there through out my life..
keep writing sir…..i am always desperate to learn from you…best wishes
Mediocrity goes well with what the world considers “normalcy”.Genius or greatness cannot flower without dreaming,imagining something which normal people would not be able to appreciate instantly.People reject what they don’t understand.Most parents won’t understand their children and won’t let them be what they want to be.Lala Hardyal has a very good asvice for children: Children owe love to their parents ,not obedience.
Thank you for writing this. I guess it’s easy to thing you don’t belong entirely to your parents when young and without children, it’s different when you have your own.
I married at 30 and now I have 3 sons, they brought so much meaning to my life and I know that one day I have to give them away to live their own path. :) Easier said then done.
But we know they do not belong to us and we are but stewards o them to teach them, train them and love them…. Well it all goes to whom do they belong in the end?
God?
All that is true, but … Mother’s heart is always on guard, to prevent space (expands from the anxiety and pain and may involve a different area of the globe, where at the time of her child, if no other help not only the sacrifice), the heart can embrace all the invisible worlds and the ways in which moving the child. And no matter what age they are. For you, a respected writer Coelho, pray the Holy. Virgin Mary to intercede for and protect. Also: “… Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive their perpetrators, and let us tempt, but deliver from evil …”
Thank you dear Teacher, once again, that you’ve given me the fortitude and strength to follow my own path!
Dear,
what a man you are????….am astonished to see each n every bit of your alphabets that gets life newly everytime when u give birth to your visions….u r simply, truely admirable n adorable….i love your constant inspirations and encouragements are really infectious and stunning that helped me to identify me in myself….thank you so much Mr. Paulo!
It is a dream of every parent to fulfill his or her unfulfilled dreams through their children and thats why such type of misjudgement occurs. But thanks to you, it is an eye opener for all of us and I loved the way you presented the whole thing. Please continue writing such unvaluable and encouraging articles for us.
Sarita,tell my story in a way..
Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet
have that book, treasure it, love that piece.
my daughters know it.
I was a rebellious child. Our parents, grandparents and Aunts always said that I am a dangerous child. I hated having Aunts in our house or any place on earth. I always screamed of freedom and independence. Our neighbors did not want their kids to play with me. I made wrong choices. I started living on my own when I was 18. Then I started losing my parents, one by one at first, then grandparents, then other relatives. Right on the time when I started longing for a family. And I realized I needed to find me a home. I thank my husband. He is my direction and my soul mate. Now our son will soon start making his own life choices. But I will understand and not judge. I will hold but not bound. I will be a bow for a strong and mighty arrow.
as parents, let’s stop manipulating the lives of our children. let us guide and educate for them to know what is right and wrong, consequences of their decisions, and taking responsibility of their actions.
I generally wonder when parents while parenting say to their kids ” You are son/daughter of God , God sent you on earth with a purpose ” so message is clear but difficult to understand .
Thanks , for a beautiful post , Sir.
its verri nice
its really true. me & my sister are called rebellion in my family ’cause we, always follow ourselves’ hearty and its commands.
and yeah. now i got something to convince other parents not to abandon their child’s dreams.
I can relate!
I was sexually abused when i was a child and kept trying to convey to my parents that something was not right with the man (one of my uncles) who often visited our house ( I would not like to call it a home) and forced me to sit on his lap. My Father could never understand and I was often beaten up for arguing and refusing to do what he wanted me to do. I was often called a rude, rather obnoxious child who probably had some mental problems. It took me a long time to realize that parents do not get a manual ( as you get it with a car, refrigerator etc)or take any training ( as you do before you drive a car) when they are handed over a child. And majority of the time they do what their parents have done to them; sadly enough nobody breaks this vicious cycle of bad parenting. No I also do not blame my parents, they say they loved me so they must have loved me in their own way…..
heart touching… but this a normal trend to get away with the traditional way of parenting.
But now-a-days with latest gadgets like internet and all we sure do have manual to handle little minds.. its just you got to break the cycle.
thanks for sharing with us what ppl usually do not.
Dear Sarita,
do you have children?
We can change things by learning from experience, though sometimes it touches deep our heart and gives pain.
Let us try to be good mentors for those who come through us.
Love is important.
I am sorry Sarita for your experience, and so I am sorry for Paulo’s experience.
I guess communication is the best way to get things sorted out.
Hey,
It happens, many of the parents never understand their kid. nor do they accept that they are wrong. But I suppose we should not blame them, for destiny might be making us strong from our childhood only. And every human has a different childhood, so it can be that god might have decided something such kind of childhood for us.
Take care.
Paulo, I feel that you are blessed to have your writing to get you through such horrible life experiences.
Many young people have nowhere to go with the madness of the world we all grow up in.
Thank you for sharing your sensitive, vulnerability with us in yet another way through this blog
Liz Page xxx
we cant hold anything against them. They always do it the best way they know who. some did not intend or were least prepared for us to be born but they made the best choice of keeping us and not getting an abortion. the best gift my parents have given me is the chance to live the rest was and still is Gods grace, gift
Thank you Mr. Coehlo for this post.
It is something to think about…
Thank Coelo, but most of all thank Khalil Gibran for all the wisdom he chared in the Piece of his life: “The Prophet”. That book has been with me through most of my life, comforting me om times of pain, enlarging my joy in times of happiness, and always giving me alot of invaliable thoughts.
Right now I’m far away from home working, and feeling à bit low. Just decided what to do – go home from the restaurant and pick up “The Eye of the Prophet” from My suitcase ( I seldom go anyway without it).
thank you for this beautiful post.
I love calling myself Crazy. I guess I love Crazy more than Stupid… I have been said that I should get help like medical support. I love Being a Day & Night Dreamer. I do not think any kind off Doctor should never give anyone a happy pill. Life is short you gotta get out and live yours. Anyway, aren’t we all crazy in our own way & don’t we all have dis.Punk.ction.all families in one way or the other. I Love & Hate you all specially when P.M.S. comes around.
I really thank u for this post.In my language it is advised that”parents r responsible only to give birth to a child but not for The ‘Karma’ i.e.his life design.”This thought predicts the same feelings in a elaborated way.
paulo u gave new pleasure to early teens
Beautifuul written…Thought provoking.Thank you Paulo Sir for sharing it with all of us.
Lots of Love and Warm Regards,
Avijeet Das,
New Delhi,
India.
Mr.coelho your each post opens new horizons for us.
we thank god to send u on earth.keep writing such wonderful things and keep us enligthend.
Regards
i did the same thing with my daughter and im very happy with the result she is living her own life and dreams and im prude of her being a leader not a follower.
Mr. Coehlo I am a fan of your books. The readers are enlightened by your writings. Thank you for whatever you write.
Ahora entiendo porque siempre me he identificado con usted EL GRAN COELHO!!! Como siempre lo he dicho ..mis mejores libros y frases son las de usted…..Lo admiro mucho!!! Gracias por existir!!!!
Mr. Paulo I’m very impressed to hear how far you’re touched with Gibran writings… Didn’t U ever think about visiting Lebanon his hometown and see the place he was inspired from ???
Respect pour vos belles paroles qui nous font grandir chaque jour, et qui nous rappelle que nous avons tous une mission a accomplir sur cette terre chacun à son niveau, mais la lumière ne demande qu’à jaillir si nous le voulant de tout notre coeur et éblouir notre prochain. GRACIAS Mister PAULO
oh..thnk god..first i thot dt wtever i ws thinkin is wrong..bt i guess i being a teenager my views abt all of dis wre absolutly correct!!..:)..
Dear Paulo,
thank you very much for sharing your brilliant experience of personal statement.
I am eager to learn so many things. Your short stories with deep meaning help me a lot.
sincerely
muy cierto…traemos hijos a la vida, que nos darán alegrías, tristezas,cansancio, desvelos…….pero cada cuál es un ser único, que tendrá su propio concepto de la vida, y tomará sus propias desiciones, para, llegado el momento, abrir sus alas y volar
rumbo a su destino………..
A child is as distinct and free as a moment in the life of a day. Each moment belongs to the day but, it still has its distinct identity. It brings with it the forces of its own- divine to destruction or, just serene or ecstatic. Yet, by the end of the day, it swears by the name of the day. While the children get surname and DNA of the parents, their lives should be built around dreams and aspirations of their own. Just as the day mustn’t paint the moment, so should the child be spared generations’ burden.
i was wondering , how could you have written such masterpieces without any paifull experiences .
now i see, obviously from personal experiences.
mr paulo,stories of indian gods as jesus kept saying, god reincarnating as humans have always went through misery and pain.
as a kid i used to wonder, why should gods and yogis suffer. Stories kept saying great soul experience pain to show ideals to mortals.
but hearing your story, including many about whom we know and several who are yet unknown. if i may include me into the list without any proud and vanity.
now i realize ,pain and suffering given by others, is not from non mortals to immortals, its from mortals to mortals the pain digs the hole to depth of experiences. from that depth sprouts something sweet and everlasting fountain and we like fools think it was immortal from the beginning itself.
thank u for the article .
love you
ashish
Paulo…..beautifully said and quoted well…..love you for your insights and providing continued inspiration…. :)
great sir paulo….
hoy entendi que los hijos buscan en sus padres confianza y esto les genera seguridad y solo con amor puedes lograrlo… no puedes vivir su vida, ni tomar sus decisiones, ni limitarlos…ni evitar sus errores… pero puedes acompañarlos y que tu compañia sea la que ellos necesitan…
very inspiring! thanks Paulo.
When I was a child my parents couldn’t understood I was a day dreamer, that change my life, now I am a mother and I can understand pretty well what my child is living, I will not cut her wings, I am helping her to fly…thank you Paulo from deep inside my heart…maybe is not to late to try to follow my dreams…
I voluntarily committed myself to a psyche ward due to bouts of depression…The insurance only covered me for six weeks…It wasn’t as bad cuz we had individual bedrooms,tv’s & telephones.
I went back on a second admission where I met a female pt. suffering from a bipolar disorder and so we began having a relationship at the ward…One night we were caught making love in the shower so they placed her on another wing…Finally we were discharged and decided to move in together but it didn’t last long.
Thank U Paulo!…I will continue attending your blog.I also read “The Prophet” by Gibran and acquired quite an education from it.
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