Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections

by Paulo Coelho

  You don’t always have to pretend to be strong,

  there’s no need to prove all the time that everything is going well,

  you shouldn’t be concerned about what other people are thinking,

  cry if you need to,

  it’s good to cry out all your tears

  (because only then will you be able to smile again).

  Sometimes, on TV, I see tunnels and bridges being inaugurated. Usually, a lot of celebrities and local politicians stand in a line, in the centre of which is the minister or local governor. Then a ribbon is cut, and when the people in charge of the project return to their desks, they find lots of letters expressing recognition and admiration.

  The people who sweated and worked on the project, who wielded pickaxes and spades, who laboured all through the summer heat or endured the winter cold in order to finish the job, are never seen; those who did not work by the sweat of their brow always seem to come off best.

  I want to be someone capable of seeing the unseen faces, of seeing those who do not seek fame or glory, who silently fulfil the role life has given them.

  I want to be able to do this because the most important things, those that shape our existence, are precisely the ones that never show their faces.

  Reflections on 11 September 2001

  Only now, a few years on, can I write about these events. I avoided writing about it at the time, to allow everyone to think about the consequences of the attacks in their own way.

  It is always very hard to accept that a tragedy can, in some way, have positive results. As we gazed in horror at what looked more like a scene from a science fiction movie – the two towers crumbling and carrying thousands of people with them as they fell – we had two immediate responses: first, a sense of impotence and terror in the face of what was happening; second, a sense that the world would never be the same again.

  The world will never be the same, it’s true; but, after this long period of reflection on what happened, is there still a sense that all those people died in vain? Or can something other than death, dust, and twisted steel be found beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center?

  I believe that the life of every human being is, at some point, touched by tragedy. It could be the destruction of a city, the death of a child, a baseless accusation, an illness that appears without warning and brings with it permanent disability. Life is a constant risk, and anyone who forgets this will be unprepared for the challenges that fate may have in store. Whenever we come face to face with that inevitable suffering, we are forced to try and make some sense of what is happening, to overcome our fear, and set about the process of rebuilding.

  The first thing we must do when confronted by suffering and insecurity is to accept them for what they are. We cannot treat these feelings as if they had nothing to do with us, or transform them into a punishment that satisfies our eternal sense of guilt. In the rubble of the World Trade Center there were people like us, who felt secure or unhappy, fulfilled or still struggling to grow, with a family waiting for them at home, or driven to despair by the loneliness of the big city. They were American, English, German, Brazilian, Japanese; people from all corners of the globe, united by the common – and mysterious – fate of finding themselves, at around nine o’clock in the morning, in the same place, a place which, for some, was pleasant and, for others, oppressive. When the two towers collapsed, not only those people died: we all died a little, and the whole world grew smaller.

  When faced by a great loss, be it material, spiritual, or psychological, we need to remember the great lessons taught to us by the wise: patience, and the certainty that everything in this life is temporary. From that point of view, let us take a new look at our values. If the world is not going to be a safe place again, at least not for many years, then why not take advantage of that sudden change, and spend our days doing the things we have always wanted to do, but for which we always lacked the courage? On the morning of 11 September 2001, how many people were in the World Trade Center against their will, following a career that didn’t really suit them, doing work they didn’t like, simply because it was a safe job and would guarantee them enough money for a pension in their old age?

  That was the great change in the world, and those who were buried beneath the rubble of the two towers are now making us rethink our own lives and values. When the towers collapsed, they dragged down with them dreams and hopes; but they also opened up our own horizons, and allowed each of us to reflect upon the meaning of our lives.

  According to a story told about events immediately after the bombing of Dresden, a man was walking past a plot of land covered in rubble when he saw three workmen.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  The first workman turned round and said: ‘Can’t you see? I’m shifting these stones!’

  ‘Can’t you see? I’m earning a wage!’ said the second workman.

  ‘Can’t you see?’ said the third workman. ‘I’m rebuilding the cathedral!’

  Although those three workmen were all engaged on the same task, only one had a sense of the real meaning of his life and his work. Let us hope that in the world that exists after 11 September 2001, each of us will prove able to lift ourselves out from beneath our own emotional rubble and rebuild the cathedral we always dreamed of, but never dared to create.

  God’s Signs

  I sabelita told me the following story. An old illiterate Arab used to pray with such fervour each night that the wealthy owner of the great caravan decided to summon him so as to talk to him.

  ‘Why do you pray with such devotion? How do you know God exists when you don’t even know how to read?’

  ‘I do know, sir. I can read everything that the Great Celestial Father writes?’

  ‘But how?’

  The humble servant explained.

  ‘When you receive a letter from someone far away, how do you recognize the writer?’

  ‘By the handwriting.’

  ‘When you receive a jewel, how do you know who made it?’

  ‘By the goldsmith’s mark.’

  ‘When you hear animals moving about near the tent, how do you know if it was a sheep, a horse, or an ox?’

  ‘By its footprints,’ replied the owner, surprised at all these questions.

  The old man invited him to come outside with him and showed him the sky.

  ‘Neither the things written up there, nor the desert down below, could have been made or written by the hand of man.’

  Alone on the Road

  Life is like a great bicycle race, whose aim is to fulfil our personal legend, which, according to the ancient alchemists, is our true mission on earth.

  We all set off together, sharing friendship and enthusiasm; but as the race progresses, that initial happiness gives way to the real challenges: tiredness, boredom, doubts about our own abilities. We notice that a few friends have, in their hearts, already given up. They are still cycling, but only because they cannot stop in the middle of the road. There are more and more of them, pedalling along beside the support vehicle – also known as routine – talking amongst themselves, fulfilling their obligations, but oblivious to the beauties and challenges of the road.

  We eventually leave them behind us, and then we come face to face with loneliness, with unfamiliar bends in the road, and mechanical problems with our bicycle. At a certain stage, after suffering a few falls with no one near at hand to help, we begin to ask ourselves if it’s really worth all the effort.

  Yes, it is. It’s just a question of not giving up. Father Alan Jones says that in order to overcome these obstacles, we need four invisible forces: love, death, power and time.

  We must love because we ourselves are loved by God.

  We must have an awareness of death in order fully to understand life.

  We must struggle in order to grow, but without allowing ourselves to be deceived by the power that is gained through that struggle, because we know that such power is worthless.

 
; Finally, we must accept that our soul – even though it is eternal – is at this moment caught in the web of time, with all its opportunities and limitations.

  Therefore, on our solitary bicycle race, we must behave as if time existed and do everything we can to value each second, to rest when necessary, but to keep cycling towards the divine light, and not be put off by any moments of anxiety.

  These four forces cannot be treated as problems to be solved, because they are beyond anyone’s control. We must accept them, and let them teach us what we need to learn.

  We live in a universe that is at once vast enough to enclose us, and small enough to fit inside our heart. In the soul of man is the soul of the world, the silence of wisdom. As we pedal towards our goal, we must make a point of asking ourselves: ‘What is beautiful about today?’ The sun might be shining, but if it happens to be raining, always remember that this only means that the dark clouds will soon have disappeared. The clouds do disappear; but the sun remains the same, and never goes away. In moments of loneliness, it is important to remember this.

  When things get hard, let us not forget that – independent of race, colour, social situation, beliefs, or culture – everyone has experienced exactly the same. A lovely prayer written by the Egyptian Sufi master Dhu ‘l-Nun (d. ad 861) neatly sums up the attitude one needs to adopt at such times:

  O God, when I listen to the voices of the animals, to the sound of the trees, the murmur of the water, the singing of the birds, to the rushing of the wind or to the rumble of thunder, I see in them evidence of Your unity; I feel that You are supreme power, supreme knowledge, supreme wisdom, supreme justice.

  O God, I also recognize you in the difficulties I am experiencing now. God, let Your satisfaction be my satisfaction, and let me be Your joy, the joy that a Father takes in his child. And let me remember You with calmness and determination, even when it is hard for me to say: I love You.

  The Funny Thing About Human Beings

  A man asked my friend Jaime Cohen: ‘What is the human being’s funniest characteristic?’

  Cohen said: ‘Our contradictoriness. We are in such a hurry to grow up, and then we long for our lost childhood. We make ourselves ill earning money, and then spend all our money on getting well again. We think so much about the future that we neglect the present, and thus experience neither the present nor the future. We live as if we were never going to die, and die as if we had never lived.’

  An Around-the-World Trip After Death

  I have often thought about what happens as we scatter little bits of ourselves around the world. I have cut my hair in Tokyo, trimmed my nails in Norway, and spilled my own blood on a mountain in France. In my first book, The Archives of Hell, I speculated briefly on this subject, about whether we had to sow a little of our own body in various parts of the world so that, in a future life, we would be sure to find something familiar. Recently, I read in the French newspaper Le Figaro an article by Guy Barret about a real-life event in June 2001 when someone took this idea to its ultimate consequences.

  The article was about an American woman, Vera Anderson, who spent all her life in Medford, Oregon. When she was getting on in years, she suffered a stroke, aggravated by pulmonary emphysema, which forced her to spend years confined to her room, connected up to an oxygen machine. This was, in itself, a torment, but in Vera’s case, it was even more of one, because she had always dreamed of travelling the world, and had saved up her money in order to be able to do so when she retired.

  Vera managed to move to Colorado so that she could spend the rest of her days with her son, Ross. There, before making her final journey – the one from which we never return – she made a decision. She might not have been able to travel even in her own country while alive, but she would travel the world after her death.

  Ross went to the local notary public and registered his mother’s will. When she died, she would like to be cremated. Nothing unusual about that. But the will went on to stipulate that her ashes were to be placed in 241 small bags, which were to be sent to the heads of postal services in the 50 American states, and to each of the 191 countries of the world, so that at least part of her body would end up visiting the places she had always dreamed about.

  As soon as Vera died, Ross carried out her last wishes with all the respect one could hope for in a son. With each remittance, he enclosed a brief letter in which he asked that his mother be given a decent funeral.

  Everyone who received Vera Anderson’s ashes treated Ross’s request with utter seriousness. In the four corners of the earth, a silent chain of solidarity was formed, in which sympathetic strangers organized the most diverse of ceremonies, depending on the place that the late Mrs Anderson would have liked to visit.

  Thus Vera’s ashes were scattered in Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia, according to the ancient traditions of the Aymara Indians; they were scattered on the river in front of the royal palace in Stockholm; on the banks of the Chao Phraya in Thailand; in a Shinto temple in Japan; on the glaciers of Antarctica; and in the Sahara desert. The sisters of charity in an orphanage in South America (the article does not specify in which country) prayed for a week before scattering the ashes in the garden, and then decided that Vera Anderson should be considered a kind of guardian angel of the place.

  Ross Anderson received photos from the five continents, from all races and all cultures, showing men and women honouring his mother’s last wishes. When we see today’s divided world, a world in which no one seems to care about anyone else, Vera Anderson’s last journey fills us with hope, for it shows us that there is still respect, love and generosity in the souls of our fellow human beings, however far away they may be.

  Who Would Like This Twenty-Dollar Bill?

  Cassan Said Amer tells the story of a lecturer who began a seminar by holding up a twenty-dollar bill and asking: ‘Who would like this twenty-dollar bill?’

  Several hands went up, but the lecturer said: ‘Before I give it to you, I have to do something.’

  He screwed it up into a ball and said: ‘Who still wants this bill?’

  The hands went up again.

  ‘And what if I do this to it?’

  He threw the crumpled bill at the wall, dropped it on the floor, insulted it, trampled on it, and once more showed them the bill – now all creased and dirty. He repeated the question, and the hands stayed up.

  ‘Never forget this scene,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter what I do to this money. It is still a twenty-dollar bill. So often in our lives, we are crumpled, trampled, ill-treated, insulted, and yet, despite all that, we are still worth the same.’

  The Two Jewels

  From the Cistercian monk, Marcos Garria, in Burgos, in Spain.

  ‘Sometimes God withdraws a particular blessing from someone so that the person can comprehend Him as something other than a being of whom one asks favours and makes requests. He knows how far He can test a soul, and never goes beyond that point. At such moments, we must never say: “God has abandoned me.” He will never do that, even though we may sometimes abandon Him. If the Lord sets us a great test, he always gives us sufficient – I would say more than sufficient – grace to pass that test.’

  In this regard, one of my readers, Camila Galvão Piva, sent me an interesting story, entitled ‘The Two Jewels’.

  A very devout rabbi lived happily with his family – an admirable wife and their two beloved sons. Once, because of his work, the rabbi had to be away from home for several days. During that period, both children were killed in a terrible car accident.

  Alone, the mother suffered in silence. However, because she was a strong woman, sustained by faith and trust in God, she endured the shock with dignity and courage. But how was she to break the tragic news to her husband? His faith was equally strong, but he had, in the past, been taken into hospital with heart problems, and his wife feared that finding out about the tragedy might cause his death too.

  All she could do was to pray to God to advise her on the best way to
act. On the eve of her husband’s return, she prayed hard and was granted the grace of an answer.

  The following day, the rabbi arrived home, embraced his wife, and asked after the children. The woman told him not to worry about them now, but to take a bath and rest.

  Some time later, they sat down to lunch. She asked him all about his trip, and he told her everything that had happened to him; he spoke about God’s mercy, and then again asked about the children.

  The wife, somewhat awkwardly, replied: ‘Don’t worry about the children. We’ll deal with them later. First, I need your help to solve what I consider to be a very grave problem.’

  Her husband asked anxiously: ‘What’s happened? I thought you looked distressed. Tell me everything that is on your mind, and I’m sure that, with God’s help, we can solve any problem together.’

  ‘While you were away, a friend of ours visited us and left two jewels of incalculable value here for me to look after. They’re really lovely jewels! I’ve never seen anything so beautiful before. He has since come to claim them back, and I don’t want to return them. I’ve grown too fond of them. What should I do?’

  ‘I can’t understand your behaviour at all! You’ve never been a woman given to vanity!’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve never seen such jewels before! I can’t bear the idea of losing them forever.’

  And the rabbi said firmly: ‘No one can lose something he or she has not possessed. Keeping those jewels would be tantamount to stealing them. We will give them back, and I will help you make up for their loss. We will do this together today.’

  ‘As you wish, my love. The treasures will be returned. In fact, they already have been. The two precious jewels were our sons. God entrusted them to our care, and while you were away, he came to fetch them back. They have gone.’