Santiago is told “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.” Do you have a goal or dream which intimidates you? Are there some dreams that we are correct to fear?
Do you believe some dreams should simply remain as dreams, like the crystal merchants’ dream of journeying to Mecca? (pg 55) When he talked about the pilgrimage to Mecca, the crystal merchant argued that having a dream is more important than fulfilling it, which is what Santiago was trying to do. Do you agree with Santiago's rationale or crystal merchant's?
5 comments:
Jeez, Ang, intimidating dreams and intimidating questions. We probably all have dreams like this (intimidating), which is a good thing. If our dreams aren't stretching our potential, we're likely not dreaming hard enough. Why would you dream about things that come easy to you, or that are super attainable anyway? Dreams should inspire and drive you. But you should never use dreams the same way as the crystal merchant otherwise you risk leading a mediocre existence. It is unreasonable to avoid fulfilling a dream and think that if it's fulfilled then you are left with nothing else. Achieved goals or dreams should inspire new and greater dreams and goals. That is just my opinion, if any of you like the crystal merchant's rationale you should explain it, because maybe I just don't understand.
I don't necessarily believe in the crystal merchants rationale, but I really do enjoy the stage of "anticipation" of something, sometimes even more than I enjoy the actual attainment of the thing.
I have thought to myself before, "once I have a gorgeous car and an amazing house and have travelled the world with my beautiful, brilliant and successful husband/children--what will I look forward to after that?" (These things aren't exactly my 'personal legend' and i'm not intimidated by attaining them, but I do WONDER). I think you're right, Heather, about not dreaming hard enough. I've always been a very "inside-the-box" thinker and sometimes I have a hard time dreaming big.
After you have kids there are SOME dreams tha should be feared. It's not just about me anymore.
Danika, like what for example?
Isn't that a point he makes in the book--that the 2nd obstacle to fulfilling your personal legend is Love? we tell ourselves that we can't fulfill certain dreams because we owe it to the people we love to not fulfill them. We tell ourselves that we must take care of those we love at the expense of our dreams. Santiago is tempted to consider the welfare of his sheep above following his 'personal legend'. Then, in the desert, when he finds Fatima & she encourages him to leave her in search of his treasure, he understands that loving and caring for someone is not a reason to abandon your dream, but a reason to fulfill it.
Matt and I were talking about how fun it would be to go do the back packing through south america together. Just get up and go and see where it takes us. But there would be times when we would just be hungry or caught in snow storms and stuff like that. we could handle it but we couldn't handle seeing our children go through it. Plus now it's time to start building a more stable launch pad for our kids. But that is not a true dream of ours anyway, it may be for someone else though. After having kids our dreams always involve all of us and we wouldn't want to do something that would hurt any of the others, so it works out nicely. But you know some middle age crisis people start getting these big dreams feeling that they need to go out and do what they didn't get to do and they leave their families behind. Those dreams should are rightfuly feared. And there is the debate about stay at home mom vs. dream career.
But I sound like such a drag. it is much more exciting that you should do whatever it is you dream about. And for the most part I believe it, but I am just over emphasising the fact that you can't be too selfish in your dreams once you have kids. Fatima didn't have kids. And she wasn't even married. I can't think of any good reason why someone should leave there family in search of their dreams. It would be very worldly.(unless it is the case of the very poor where one of them leaves to a better country in order to try to make more money for them) but that is also based on trying to survive not just a dream. But enough about that. Everyone already understand that. No one here would ever plan on leaving their family behind in search of a dream.
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