Three 'Santiago' in Odaiba, still unsure which path to choose...Picture upload by Hello(Written after read Nia's blog. For Nia, thanks for the idea... - hope you don't mind I composed this based on some of your thoughts)
Last week, Dito (uptown-girl from Sendai :-) ) visited Tokyo, and as good hosts, Nia and I showed her the way around. After our trip to Akihabara (standard place for Indonesian who visits Tokyo), we started to talk about The Alchemist. (The talk actually began with some ‘hiks’ that will be too long to be written here. Moreover, I only know little about those ‘hiks’ and I think Dito and Nia will skin me alive if I write it anyway :-) ).
Back to the alchemist - the story itself tells about a Spanish boy called Santiago (If you haven’t read the book and think that some of the funs of reading it will be lost if you know some of the events beforehand, you better skip these two paragraphs and start reading the third paragraph from here, or even better if you can get a copy of the book, read it, and back to this page. Finish it? Good, and back to the story...). From his childhood Santiago always wanted to travel and see new places other than his homeland, which led him to choose to become a shepherd, so he can go from place to place bringing his flocks to a new pasture. The story started when Santiago finally decided to ask for the hand of one girl that he liked and probably give up his nomadic way of life. At that time, when he was sleeping inside a ruin of church, he got a dream about treasure that he supposed to find. Unsure about the meaning of his dream, he asked a gypsy to read his dream. The gypsy told him (which cost him half of the treasure that he had not found yet) that there is treasure wait for him near the pyramids. Didn’t know what to do for quite sometimes, Santiago finally sold all of his sheep and set his quest for the treasure.
The road that he took was not at all an easy path. Got swindled to lost all of his money, caught between war in desert, it took months for Santiago to finally reach the pyramids. During his journey, he also made some new friends (one of it was the alchemist that became the title of the story), and also met Fatima, his (supposedly :-) ) true love. His journey went on, and to his surprise, once he got to the pyramids, he did not find any treasure. He even nearly beat up to death by a group of thieves. Did Santiago take his journey in vain and the story ended just like that? Of course not. Santiago got a hint from one of the thieves that there is a treasure buried under the ruin of church where he had slept and got his dream about the treasure before. The story ended with Santiago set his journey back to the ruins to claim his treasure, made the payment to the gypsy, and headed back to the desert village where Fatima waiting for him.
Well, it just a story, but we can always learn something from almost anything (even the pearl from the bottom of the sea has her own glow to be shared with us). The story told us (or at least I and other fans of Coelho – the author of the alchemist), that each of us has our own role living in this world (beside the religious aims that is identical for all). It is called ‘personal legend’ in this story. Although some roles seem to be bigger (or ‘cooler’) comparing to others, every single role is of the same importance. Personally, I sometimes envy some of my friends that seems to be luckier than me (having bigger/cooler role than me), when finally I realize that may be some other people envy me for what I’ve got. There is no need to envy others, because we have our own path, which will lead us to our own ‘treasure’ (well, inevitably I still cannot help envying others sometimes...).
Other thing that I like from this story is the spirit to always follow where the path that we like took us, to fight for it, and to be patient with it (for God always be with those who are patient). Like the Santiago story, he relentlessly fought his way to the pyramids and be patient with all the hard time that he had. It is right that he didn’t find his treasure near the pyramids, but it is from his journey that he got the revelation about the actual place of the treasure. Had he decided to abandon his quest to the pyramid, he would not found his treasure (although literally he had slept on it). And equally important, he will not meet Fatima, his true love.
From personal experience: I was nearly not coming to the Panasonic scholarship’s final selection when I got the invitation. I decided to come in the final moment because I thought there would be no harm if I follow the process. When I finally got the scholarship (even only as a substitute) and it is proven that I cannot found full scholarship in other places :-), I took the offer. May be it is really my path to come here in Japan and find my ‘personal legend’. And even if I cannot find it here, it is no big deal. I had learnt a lot from the past two years here, made new friends, chanced adventures, and I believe that there are still more new things to learn, new faces to meet, and new events to taste. Anyway, much much more important, may be I am supposed to meet my Fatima here... :-)
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