A Chalkboard and A Camera: August 2012

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Rambling: The Alchemist

Alright, how weird and coincidental is it that I just randomly started reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho today. My heart already loves it. Let's review the facts:

- I'm borrowing it from someone - I've skimmed through her bookshelf tons of times and just now noticed it today, even though it's been there the whole time.

- It's about someone deciding between comfort and taking risks for your dream - MY LIFE lately.

- The boy's dream also just happens to be travel.

- It is set in Spain, where I will go next month.

The story is simple and written in a lovely style, but the analogies to life and the wisdom of life are both subtle and powerful. Below are some of the best quotes of the introduction and part one. It's long, partly because it's beautiful and clearly true, and partly because I think I might want to look back on it in the future:

Welcome

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. - Marcel Proust

I am because you are. My humanity is tied to yours. - Ubuntu proverb of Africa

Everything is out there waiting for you. All you have to do is walk up and declare yourself in. No need for permission. You just need courage to say, 'Include me'. Providing you have the energy to pull it off you can do what you like. - Stuart Wilde

Let the beauty we love be what we do. - Rumi

You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. - Dr. Suess

The absurd man is he who never changes. - Auguste Barthelemy

You have exactly one life in which to do everything you'll ever do. Act accordingly. - Colin Wright

Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Be yourself. - Marva Collins

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. - John Lennon

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. - C.S. Lewis

As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves! - Lao-Tsu

I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them. - Greg Mortenson

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. - Heraclitus

Condition your body and mind to be the servant of your heart and your soul.

The difference between a beginning teacher and an experienced one is that the beginner teacher asks, "How am I doing?" and the experienced one asks, "How are the children doing?" - Esme Raji Codell

Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.

Trust that little voice in your head that says "wouldn't it be interesting if...". And then do it. - Duane Michals

Grant that I may never criticize my brother or my sister until I have walked the trail of life in their moccasins. - Cherokee prayer

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. - G.K. Chesterton

If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present. - Lao Tzu

Teaching: we're not in it for the income; we're in it for the outcome.

In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors. - William Blake

So that's the lesson, isn't it? When you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping tutti (everybody). - Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

Some people are so poor, all they have is money.

You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things. - Andy Warhol

What changed was that I found myself surrounded by people who kept pushing me to see more than what was directly in front of me, to see the boundless possibilities of the wider world and the unexplored possibilities within myself... In other words, they helped me to discover what it means to be free. - The Other Wes Moore

Wherever you go, go with all your heart. - Confucius

I’ve learned that the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am. - Andy Rooney

The men and women who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that the themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illuminated by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven't time. - Melvin J. Evans

The less I needed, the better I felt. - Charles Bukowski

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all of humanity. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. This makes planning the day difficult. -E.B. White

Don't worry about things that you have no control over, because you have no control over them. Don't worry about things that you have control over, because you have control over them. - Mickey Rivers

One of this life's greatest pleasures: a writer's books can intersect with your life and lead you to the next largest space you can occupy. - Frances Mayes

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. - Albert Einstein

The highest result of education is tolerance. - Helen Keller

See, the ingredient is to care about people, and to love them. That's the ingredient, across the board. - Crips and Bloods movie

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer - into selflessness, which links us to all of humanity. - Mary Astor

If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough.

We warriors of light must be prepared to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how. - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

To teach is to learn twice over. - Joseph Joubert

We have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved. - Mother Teresa

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

All is well. You did not come here to fix a broken world. The world is not broken. You came here to live a wonderful life. And if you can learn to relax a little and let it all in, you will begin to see the universe present you with all that you have asked for. - Esther Abraham-Hicks

And then many things became very clear... we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth. - Che Guevara

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. - Orison Swett Marden

Give yourself a dream, and give it to all the world as well. Choose a dream that enables you to lift others higher as you lift yourself higher and do what you truly love. - Ralph Marston

There is no difference between living and learning. It is impossible and misleading and harmful to think of them as being separate. - John Holt

The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. - Dr. Paul Farmer

Decide what to be and go
be it.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Rambling: The Alchemist