Adultery

by Paulo Coelho

Happiness is not something that can be precisely measured, discussed in plebiscites, or analyzed by specialists.

For example: the world has stopped. Not just my world, but the world of everyone around me. When we meet with friends, we always talk about the same things and the same people. The conversations seem new, but it’s all just a waste of time and energy. We’re trying to prove that life is still interesting. Everyone is trying to control their own unhappiness.

After a certain age, we put on a mask of confidence and certainty. In time, that mask gets stuck to our face and we can’t remove it.

tortured souls recognize each other and are drawn together in order to frighten the living.

I was sitting in a corner of the playground that was usually deserted and studying the tiles on the school wall. I knew there was something wrong with me. The other children all thought I acted “better than them,” and I never made any attempt to deny this. On the contrary. I made my mother keep buying me expensive clothes and taking me to school in her pricey foreign car.

But that day in the playground, I realized that I was alone, and might remain alone for the rest of my life. Even though I was only eight years old, it seemed like it was already too late to change and to prove to the other children that I was just like them.

On my way home, I noticed a few mushrooms that had sprung up after the rain. They were perfect and intact because everyone knew they were poisonous. For a fraction of a second, I considered eating them. I wasn’t feeling particularly sad or particularly happy; I just wanted to get my parents’ attention. I didn’t eat the mushrooms.

You don’t choose your life; it chooses you. There’s no point asking why life has reserved certain joys or griefs, you just accept them and carry on.

We can’t choose our lives, but we can decide what to do with the joys or griefs we’re given.

But in my usual mania for believing whatever I want, I think of it as romantic.

There is a hole in my soul that drains me of all positive energy, leaving behind only emptiness. I know the hole well—I have lived with it for months—but I don’t know how to escape its hold over me.

“We aren’t who we want to be. We are what society demands. We are what our parents choose. We don’t want to disappoint anyone; we have a great need to be loved. So we smother the best in us. Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. They become things not done, possibilities not lived.”

So Calvin’s motto—after the darkness, light—is wrong.

“Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel, if that’s what you mean. But sometimes, when the person crosses through the darkness and reaches the other side, he leaves an enormous path of destruction behind him.”

There comes a time when defeat is inevitable, but at least they fought until the end. We already have everything we need. There is nothing to improve. Thinking we are good or bad, fair or unfair, all that is nonsense.