Skip to content Skip to footer

#11 – That Can Never Happen To Me

Today I’d like to share something with you from one of my favorite books. The Alchemist by Paulo Ceolho. I am re-reading it again found a passage I wanted to share with you. Enjoy.

He became friendly with the camel driver who traveled alongside him. At night, as they sat around the fire, the boy related to the driver his adventures as a shepherd.

During one of these conversations, the driver told his own life.

“I used to live near El Cairum,” he said. “I had my orchard, my children, and a life that would change not until I died. One year, when the crop was the best ever, we all went to Mecca, and I satisfied the only unmet obligation in my life. I could die happily and that made me feel good.

One day, the earth began to tremble, and the Nile overflowed its banks. it was something that I thought could only happen to others, never to me. My neighbors feared they would lose all their olive trees in the flood, and my wife was afraid that we would lose all our children. I thought that everything I owned would be destroyed.

The land was ruined, and I had to find some other way to earn a living. So now I am a camel driver. But that disaster taught me to understand the word of Allah: people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.

We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.”

Sargans, Switzerland

Leave a comment