A while ago a friend suggested a novel called The Alchemist. I must say, after I “Amazoned” it for a little bit (yes, I used Amazon as a verb), I was a little hesitant to read it. However, I found it not too long ago under dusty romance novels when I was visiting a thrift store with my mom. It was only fifty cents which I took as a sign that I was supposed to read it. So, the verdict……….incredible! One of the most soul opening novels I’ve read lately and though it uses straightforward diction and an easy to digest style, Paulo Coelho tells a refined story of a boy in search of his Personal Legend.
This excerpt I posted below comes from the section when Santiago, the protagonist, meets Fatima, his soul mate, for the first time.
“She smiled, and that was certainly an omen—the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life. The omen he had sought to find with his sheep and in his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert. 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 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 was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.”
I read this passage with tears in my eyes and wondered if that's how experiencing love should be or are these just the words of a dreamer? Is it possible to for a human being to encounter another human being and realize in that moment that this person is whom he or she has been created to love? Are we all stumbling around this earth in search of our “twin soul?” My first instinct is to be a skeptic. It astounds me how a person can glimpse at another human being and inherently know that they can love that person for the rest of their life. This concept scares me because our modern day culture has turn love into an empty and fickle thing. However, for those that find it and leap, I admire your courage. Oh to be so bold and know that, as Coelho writes it, “there is no reason needed for love.”
As for me, I’ve realized that I only trust the love that has become a habit. I trust God’s love, my parents’ love, my friends’ love and so on. As far as romantic love, I must admit that fear creeps like a ghost in my heart when I think about it. Will I ever find that love that keeps you clinging to another person for fifty or sixty years? I question if there is a man out there that will see me and choose to wake up to me for the rest of his life. I don’t speak from insecurity, I speak from uncertainty. I have observed the world around me and the idea of love that is projected from our culture and media and my goodness, at times I say that if that is what love is, I don’t want it. I refuse an inconsistent love that feeds on moments of infatuation and surrenders when the love spell is over. My heart aches for a love that yearns to please more than the self and hungers to unlock the potential of its recipient. I have only found that love in one place, and that is in my Abba Father. As far as romantic love, I hope to find it among we fallen humans soon. I hope to find a love that I can cling on to that nurtures and gives me a glimpse of Eden.
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