Woman Ambae:
A Tale of Peace Corps in the South Pacific

Have I mentioned I've read 68 books since departure? And the list is growing.

Currently reading:

Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevsky

The Death of American Virtue (Clinton vs. Starr)- Gromley

Below is a particularly fitting excerpt from one of my very favorite books that I just finished re-reading, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. If you've not yet read this, do so.

10^th anniversary addition prologue by the author:

"Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream…

There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us from going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream, suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse, ‘oh well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fight for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?

Because once we have overcome the defeats, and we always do, we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each our, is part of the good fight. We start to life with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from that bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said, ‘each man kills the thing he loves.’ And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal- when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it, renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get… then you help the soul of the world, and you understand why you are here.”

Paulo Coelho

Rio de Janeiro

November 2002

The Alchemist, pg. 134-137

“‘My heart is a traitor,’ the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. ‘It does not want me to go on.’

‘That makes sense,’ the alchemist answered. ‘Naturally, it is afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.’

‘Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?’

‘Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heart what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.’

‘You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?’

‘Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know you’re heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and you’ll know how to deal with them. You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.’

The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy.

‘Even though I complain sometimes,’ it said, ‘it’s because I’m the heart of a person and people’s hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because when these things happen, we suffer terribly.’

‘My heart is afraid it will have to suffer,’ the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

‘Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse that the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.’

So his heart was quiet for an entire afternoon. That night, the boy slept deeply, and when he awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the soul of the world.

‘Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,’ his heart said, ‘we, peoples’ hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed in its own direction, toward its own fate. But unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them- to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.’

‘So we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won’t be heard: we don’t want people to suffer because they don’t follow their hearts.’

‘Why don’t peoples’ hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?’ the boy asked the alchemist.

‘Because that makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.’

From then on, the boy understood his heart. He asked it, please, never to stop speaking to him. He asked that, when he wandered far from his dreams, his heart press him and sound the alarm. The boy swore that every time he heart the alarm, he would heed its message.”

And lastly, photos from a weekend stroll on the beach...