and no more damaging advice than to follow your dreams.

Book Review of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

It’s a terminating thought. Dreams are good in and of themselves, and chasing them cannot be damaging because to achieve a dream is the start and end of the prescription. What you're willing to sacrifice is a signal to others your commitment to your dreams; the more meaningful the sacrifice, the more meaningful your commitment. Failure to achieve your dreams is a failure to yourself, the world, and your life. Bought into this philosophy, a person who fails to achieve their dreams desperately warns others, because at a point, constraints and demands and commitments and responsibilities become obstacles that obstruct every perceived path to that dream. Perceived, because if you are truly committed, if you want to be the best version of yourself, if you want to be successful, you would push past your constraints and demands and commitments and responsibilities to achieve that dream. How committed are you, really?

Keale: I know my Personal Legend.

Me: Yeah?

Keale: Yeah. To change lives. That's the meaning of my name; ripples in the water, how one action can reverberate through the world, seen or unseen by the pebble that caused it.

Me: “To change lives" is too abstract. Your Personal Legend should be more concrete, something tangible you can hold in your hands, or at the very least something measurable. Santiago sought a treasure in Egypt, and it wasn't even something gay like “friendship.” Just actual, literal treasure. No metaphor.

Keale: Okay well, good for Santiago. I can change the world and it's tangible. Through art, I guess. It's what I'm best at. Somehow, BOYMODE resonated enough with other trannies to go semi-viral on pre-trans FYPs and that wasn't even my intention. I just needed to externalize my emotional pain. Create my own prosthetic. Rely on something outside of myself from inside myself. Something others can rely on too.

It’s your Personal Legend, Coelho claims, that is your reason for being. You were brought to Earth for a purpose. There is only one Legend, see, and it is your sole purpose for life, paired with any number of distractions which you may confuse for your Legend but are intended to lead you away from your Legend. How can you tell distractions from Legend? That’s a truth for the eyes of God. Santiago met his God at a market. Should we all be so lucky. And often not, so there’s no better use of time than to discover what that purpose is, because you have one shot at life, and if you fail to do everything in your power to seek the end of your Legend then it will be lost to you forever, and you may find that someone else dreamed your dream for you.

Me: What if you were meant for something more than mere art?

Keale: Okay, rude. And weird. Art changes lives in ways nothing else can. It's the closest you can get to directly communicating feelings. Porter Robinson saved our life with that concert, you remember.

Me: But he also led us down a fruitless path. What are you doing with your Audio Production degree again?

Keale: Okay, rude. And weird. And ouch. You know that's a sore spot for us. And besides, the field of study for undergrad degrees is basically meaningless anyways, unless you really want to practice medicine, which I know you don't. That degree taught us a lot about what's really important. It taught us that industry work is taxing. 60 hour work weeks, inconsistent schedules, gigs that come and go, no benefits.

Me: You know what I mean though. You read the book. You get what I'm getting at. How do you know art is really the best way for you to change the world? You only get one life.

There's a good reason Coelho portrays Santiago as a naive child. Old enough to trek over the strait of Gibraltor and over the deserts of Egypt, sure, but young enough to develop a childlike crush in Tarifa, to discover the doldrums of salarywork in Tangier, to lead on a potential suitor in the Al-Fayoum oasis. Santiago has no commitments and no responsibilities to start with, and Coelho refuses to allow Santiago to commit to anything. Even to what he loves.

How does Santiago know his Personal Legend isn't in tending to his flock and courting this unnamed merchant-daughter in Andalusia? He enjoys his work in an almost romantic sense, reading books he trades for more books, traveling down new roads just for the sense of adventure, talking to new people, falling in love. It's not until he tells the gypsy of his dream, being led to Egypt by a child with the promise of treasure, that doubt is sown in his mind, and not until he meets God in the marketplace, that doubt solidifies into a belief.

How does Santiago know his Personal Legend isn't in the doldrums of salaried living? He hated it at first, seeing it as a mere opportunity to survive, but over the course of 11 months he grew fond of both the job and the shopkeeper, he learned to optimize his workflow, finding meaning in what could otherwise be meaningless. It's not until the shopkeeper tells Santiago of his own ambitions to pilgrim to mecca, that doubt is sown in his mind, and not until he judges the pilgrimage as the shopkeepers failed Personal Legend, that doubt solidifies into a belief.

How does Santiago know his Personal Legend isn't in Fatima, his proposed suitor? I'm going to break my prose now. I'm too emotional for a 3-part structure. He loves her. Not like the childlike crush he had on the merchant-daughter, whose name his doubt prevented him from learning. It's a more mature love that erupted just as powerfully — in writing, more powerfully — as his moment with God, whom he initially doubted. “It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing.” He proposes. He's “committed.” But not committed enough to stay. Not committed enough to follow through with his proposal. At the end of the book, he heads to the oasis but his marriage is left to interpretation. My interpretation is she moves on. So, how does this little boy know? How does he know his Personal Legend is the treasure and not the woman he believes he will marry, when these two forces clash with equal intensity? Because this book isn't about commitment. It's about faith.

Keale: You're sensitive about Fatima, aren't you?

Me: You're changing the subject to avoid answering my pointed question by asking me a pointed question.

Keale: You're sensitive about Fatima.

Me: Yes I'm sensitive about Fatima. Fuck you.

Keale: Hey, hey. No need for that. Why?

Me: You know that's a sore spot for us.

Keale: A man who won't commit, huh.

Me: A man who won't commit. That's what the whole book is about. It's no Don Quixote — a commentary. It's a bible verse — a parable. It's about teaching the reader to abandon their commitments and responsibilities. It's no wonder it hit the white American market like crack hit black innercity communities. An individualist book for individualist people.

Keale: Hmm. Do you think the book would have been any different if Santiago was a father in Andalusia, instead of just a father's son?

Me: No. I don't think Coelho would care. And I don't think he would craft an all that compelling argument either.

Keale: You're a bit mean to Coelho.

Me: He's a hippie bitch, I hate this loser.

Keale: Okay, rude. And weird. Why do you even care?

Me: Because changing the world is my Personal Legend; Keale is my name, too. The worst part, is Coelho stole it from me.

The refugee tells Santiago at sword-point, “In my dream, there was a sycamore growing out of the ruins of the sacristy, and I was told that, if I dug at the roots of the sycamore, I would find a hidden treasure. But I’m not so stupid as to cross an entire desert just because of a recurrent dream.” It's small, but this is the most evil line in the entire parable. The lesson here is simple. If you fail to achieve your Personal Legend, someone will take it from you. Someone with faith.

Keale: Okay? The dude is like, 80 now. You weren't even alive when he wrote the book.

Me: Yeah, yeah. I read his Wikipedia page too, that's how I know he's a hippie bitch.

Keale: You just sound butthurt that he became a millionaire off of one big grift.

Me: Yeah no shit, I hate grifters. But Coelho is no grifter. Well, I don't know about now — decrepit hippie bitch — but at least he wasn't when he wrote that book. He really believed it. His parents funded his law career until he made “changing the world" his Personal Legend too, dropping out after a year to become a writer.

Keale: Life isn't zero-sum. Personal Legends aren't zero-sum.

Me: Coelho would disagree with you.

Keale: Well, okay, yeah sure, but everyone can change the world. And they will, one way or another. What makes this so stolen to you?

Me: Because he spread what I think is an evil ideology, one that is antithetical to mine. I believe in commitments, responsibilities. He doesn't. And also? I'm just spiteful. I’m jealous. Whatever. Now answer my question, you weasel. How do you know art is really the best way for you to change the world?

Keale: Oh, it's easy.

For every decision, you can make one choice, a choice that can't be undone because once you've made a choice you've fostered the conditions for a second, different choice. So how do you make the “right" choice? Coelho would tell you to ask God. I would tell you to ask yourself. Some would say those are identical answers. What really matters to you? What kind of person do you want to be? What characteristics does your ideal self embody? The answers can only come from trial and error. You make decisions, the outcomes suck, you feel like shit, and you suffer. And you suffer. And you suffer. And from the ashes of suffering arises your answer — what you should have done in the first place.

Santiago goes through this process too, throughout the whole book, but Coelho externalizes the resulting success on God instead of the boy who made the choices.

Santiago made the choice to sell his sheep and leave Andalusia. Santiago made the choice to stay in the crystal shop for a year and Santiago made the choice to leave. Santiago made the choice to leave Fatima in the desert and Santiago made the choice to return to Andalusia and Santiago made the choice to return to Al-Fayoum. And he suffered for it. And he found his treasure. And he fulfilled his Personal Legend.

Keale: When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

Me: Ah. We are our universe.

Keale: We always have been.

Me: We're all we've ever known.