[[ PAULO COELHO IS MY HERO TONIGHT ]]

If you really read my blog, then you will know that I am not in a very good place right now. To remedy that, I turned to Paulo Coelho for help. I have read Alchemist and 11 Minutes long ago and I have known how intensely inspiring his books are. I thought to myself why not read one of his other books. I am now reading The Pilgrimage and I have read a few lines that I want to remember for the rest of my life. Here they are:

"We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide
nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the
body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered
and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue
dreaming. If we don't, our soul dies, and agape cannot
reach it. A lot of blood has been shed in those fields out
there; some of the cruelest battles of Spain's war to
expel the Moors were fought on them. Who was in the
right or who knew the truth does not matter; what's
important is knowing that both sides were fighting the
good fight."

"The good fight is the one we fight because our heart
asks it of us. In the heroic ages – at the time of the
knights in armor – this was easy. There were lands to
conquer and much to do. Today, though, the world has
changed a lot, and the good fight has shifted from the
battlefields to the fields within ourselves."

"The good fight is the one that's fought in the
name of our dreams. When we're young and our
dreams first explode inside us with all of their force,
we are very courageous, but we haven't yet learned
how to fight. With great effort, we learn how to fight,
but by then we no longer have the courage to go into
combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle
within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that
our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or
the result of our not having known enough about life.
We kill our dreams because we are afraid to fight the
good fight."

"The first symptom of the process of our killing our
dreams is the lack of time. The
busiest people I have known in my life always have time
enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are
always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of
work they are required to do. They complain constantly
that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to
fight the good fight.

"The second symptom of the death of our dreams
lies in our certainties. Because we don't want to see life
as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as
wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We
look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and
we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust
and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire
in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight,
the immense delight in the hearts of those who are
engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor
defeat is important; what's important is only that they
are fighting the good fight."

"And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of
our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon;
we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything
more than we are willing to give. In that state, we
think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies
of our youth, and we seek personal and professional
achievement. We are surprised when people our
age say that they still want this or that out of life. But
really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened
is that we have renounced the battle for our
dreams – we have refused to fight the good fight."

Tomorrow when I wake up, maybe, maybe I'll start dreaming again. :)

P.S.

To my blogger friends and anonymous readers, thank you for the continuing support despite my inadequacies these days. The fact that someone out there still cares to read this, means a lot to me. No kidding.