Alchemist (Updated)

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is an inspirational book about self-discovery and following your dreams. It follows the journey of an Andalusian shepherd who travels to Egypt in search of treasure and learns valuable lessons along the way. The main theme emphasized throughout the book is the importance of pursuing one's personal legend and listening to the desires of the soul. The book is recommended for anyone going through a transition or needing a reminder of what life is truly about. It encourages readers to think about their true aspirations and not get caught up in logistics or societal expectations. This is CJ back with another book review, and this week we're going to be talking about one of my new favorites, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The author is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist, and he's become one of the most celebrated literary figures. His books are really inspirational. He puts a lot of symbolism into his writing, and he kind of blends this spirituality into it as well. For those of you that don't know much about The Alchemist, it follows the story of an Andalusian shepherd who decides to travel to visit the pyramids in Egypt. He thinks that there's treasure waiting for him after having dreams about it. The story follows his journey and the people he meets on the way and the lessons he learns. So it's essentially a journey about self-discovery, and while he's learning things about himself, as a reader we're also learning things about our lives and ourselves side by side. Now moving on to the themes, the thing that's really emphasized throughout the book is following your dream. The author, in many instances, writes that everyone has their own personal legend, as he calls it. We all have our own path that we're destined for. On page 22 he says, On this planet, whoever you are or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on Earth. So the book is kind of revolved around this one main idea, this one theme, and the boy first learns about this from a really important character at the beginning of the book who is called the Old Man, and this is the event that propels him forward and basically starts his adventure. I chose this book specifically because I knew it would help me in a time of transition, which I am in right now. I feel like it's eye-opening to read this when you're at a place in your life when you don't really know what you want to do, you don't really know how things are going to look going forward, and I would most certainly recommend this to anyone that's at a point in their lives when they just need to remember what life is all about. You know, when we're kids, we all think about what we want to be when we grow up and it kind of felt like the sky was the limit. There was no thoughts of how much money is this going to make me, am I going to be successful doing this? We were only thinking, is this something that I'm going to enjoy, am I going to gain happiness from this job? And I totally feel like this book kind of brings us back to that place. Stop thinking about the logistics and start thinking about what it is you truly want to do. Ask yourself, is this my dream? Thanks for listening, be sure to come back next week for a brand new episode.