Paulo Coelho book review

I recently read a couple books by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage and The Alchemist.

Coelho has an interesting story. As a child, he longed to be a writer, but his parents disapproved, so he instead ended up in law school. He dropped out after a year and quickly picked up a career as a songwriter. About ten years past, and he had a spiritual awakening while walking a Christian pilgrimage route in Northern Spain. He realized that he was living a satisfactory life, but not living out his true dream of becoming a writer. Within a year, The Pilgrimage and The Alchemist followed.

The Pilgrimage is an autobiography/novel about Coelho’s Northern Spain pilgrimage. He meets a guide that takes him on the treacherous journey as he learns reflective life practices along the way.

The Alchemist is by far his best-selling book, attaining a Guiness World Record mark of most translated book by a living author. It's a fable about a young shepherd who leaves his comfortable life behind to search for treasures hidden in the pyramids of Egypt. Only about 150 pgs, it’s an easy read, and it definitely left me feeling uplifted. I highly, highly recommend The Alchemist.

There are so many ideas I want to touch on from these books, but I’ll focus on just one for now. I wanted to talk about something that relates to the whole basis of The Alchemist, which starts from a young shepherd’s recurring dream. The shepherd can’t shake this deep-down desire that he’s supposed to chase down some distant treasure, and even though it sounds crazy, he finally builds up the courage to depart on the journey.

As for my "journey" of becoming a doctor, I have a similar scene that scrolls through my head every once in a while. I wouldn’t say it’s why I want to be a doctor nor would I call it a recurring dream, but it’s just an image that’s been stuck in my head for a while. I’ll explain:

I imagine myself walking the halls of my Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in the late hours of the night, maybe 1 or 2 AM. The rooms are dark, except for the dimmed hall lights. I run into a dad struggling with the loss of his only daughter. For the fifth time that day, I go over the ever worsening white blood cell counts of his daughter, and we get to talking about his life. We sit down, I pour us a glass of gin, or coffee, whichever is more available. He talks about his life, and I sit there listening. He might not decide to do a complete 180 with his life, but he thinks about it. And maybe the seed is planted for future change.

If you’re wasting the time to read this blog, odds are probably good that we’ve had a chat like this. It’s probably my favorite thing, speculating about life. I've seen hospitals, with emotions running high, as a place that opens the door for such thoughts. I want the opportunity to work somewhere that I can support people confronting these struggles, literally life and death. That would definitely be my dream job.

When I explain why I want to go into medicine, I don’t really talk about this scene because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But the image is always in the back of my head. And I can’t help but be struck by the last line from The Pilgrimage:

“I guess it is true that people always arrive at the right moment at the place where someone awaits them.”

Hopefully one day in my future, I’ll be at the clinic at the right time.

from ken

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