Nuggets of Gold

Ok, so here we are on the second installment of my search for some nuggets of gold. It just dawned on me as I write this that it is a bit ironic that I use that term. The Alchemist is about a young boy on a search for lost treasure, or so I gather from the book sleeve. Something for me to ponder.

Anyhow, this is the update on my search. After my last writing, I sat down and read the introduction by the author, Paulo Coelho. I didn’t just find nuggets of gold; I found a veritable gold mine! Precisely what I meant about things calling out to us. There’s always something they have to say to us and so far, it’s speaking loud and clear.

So Paulo opens this novel with an introduction about ‘our personal calling’ and ‘confronting our own dream’. Or rather, the lack of confrontation and the reasons behind it. Today’s writing focuses on the realizations of why I haven’t jumped into the fray as of yet, well, until now anyhow. No short blog on this day. My apologies in advance for the length.

First, a bit about personal calling. Paulo defines it as such: “It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on earth.” Powerful! I’ve always know that our calling is the path we are meant to follow, but I’ve always seen it as a purpose, not a blessing. To me, there’s a profound difference in how I view the two. A purpose is a job; a blessing is a gift, a reward.

So what’s my personal calling? Writing. Pure and simple. I love to write. I love to express thoughts, emotions, and experiences through writing. Sometimes, it’s the only way I know how to. So why haven’t I done it? Four reasons: impossibility, love, fear of defeat, and fear of succeeding.

Let’s analyze impossibility. Paulo says that we are raised with the belief that chasing and realizing our dreams is an impossibility. I don’t know that I was really taught that so much as having been made aware of all the people that tried and failed. How many people in the world pursue the dream of being a writer, singer, artist, or actor? How many of them actually succeed?

It’s not even that so much as we rarely ever hear about the struggle that the people who became successes went through. All too often, we only hear about the people who seemingly ‘make it’ overnight. The ones who just sort of fall into their dream. So the rest of us sit and wait and wonder when it’s going to happen to us instead of actually running for the goal.

Should we however, actually begin to chase the dream, Paulo says love is the next obstacle. He says we’re afraid of hurting those around us. I think in some cases this is true as people do tend to step on toes as they scrabble for the top. But while I do agree that love is the next obstacle, I also believe it goes much deeper than being afraid of hurting others.

Love is a two-way street. Yes, we need to be aware of what we do to those we love. Time spent being self-absorbed in our own pursuit takes time from them. We can’t just push them aside and ignore them. We also need to love them enough to know that they have dreams just as we do. It’s not all about us.

On the flip-side, we need our family and friends to support us in our pursuit. This doesn’t mean just saying, “I’ll support you in anything you do.” This means becoming an active participant in the struggle. Whether it’s someone to throw ideas your way or pushing you to keep on keeping on, whatever the role, just being there in some capacity always helps.

That was my obstacle in the love department, not having someone who believed in me enough to give me some hope of ever achieving my dream. Thankfully I have that now. But again, I’m not the only one with a dream. Pursue my dream, realize hers, and still take time for us.

Ok, obstacle two is gone, on to the third. Fear of defeat. Paulo says: “We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because…our whole heart is in this journey.” We’ve invested our entire being in our quest, and when at some point, defeat stares us down, it’s earth-shattering.

This is huge for me and I’m not really sure how I would face rejection and defeat. I know I can’t expect an easy fulfillment. I know that rejection and defeat will happen. That, my readers, is why I’ve always made excuses not to start to begin with. But, I have love on my side now. I have someone to bolster me and keep me moving forward when those moments come, so the excuses are over.

Now, to just overcome the last hurdle. The fear of succeeding. It sounds odd, I know, but it is a really good point. Oscar Wilde said: “Each man kills the thing he loves.” We come to the culmination of our success, on the verge of realizing our greatest achievement and we trash it. We just get plain old dumb.
Paulo contributes this to feeling as if we don’t deserve our success. But this brings me right back to the very beginning. Writing is my personal calling. Its God’s blessing. It’s the path He chose for me. It’s already there waiting for us, we just have to put in some effort to get to it.

So what have any of us done to deserve our success? Nothing. The real question is, ‘What are we willing to do, from this point on, to earn it?’

So what am I willing to do to honor it? I for one am willing to stop wasting it. I’m willing to grab this bull by the horns and seriously commit to this pursuit. No more waiting for it to just fall into place and happen. No more making excuses and failing to start. It’s time to get all Nike on it and ‘Just do it.’

One last quote from Paulo: “But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.” If God believed me worthy of it, who am I to argue?