By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

by Paulo Coelho

I wanted to see him again; I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to sit with him in a café and remember the old days, when we had thought the world was far too large for anyone ever to know it truly.

YOU HAVE TO take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

Every day, God gives us the sun—and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived that moment, that it doesn’t exist—that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists—a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won’t suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when that person looks back—and at some point everyone looks back—she will hear her heart saying, “What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage: the certainty that you wasted your life.”

could have. What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but didn’t. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.

I spend day after day with my texts and notebooks, making this superhuman effort just to purchase my own servitude, I thought. Why do I want that job? What does it offer me as a human being, as a woman? Nothing! I wasn’t born to spend my life behind a desk,

“The wise are wise only because they love. And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love,”

love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.

In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.

“Some people always have to be doing battle with someone, sometimes even with themselves, battling with their own lives. So they begin to create a kind of play in their head, and they write the script based on their frustrations.”

“But the worst part is that they cannot present the play by themselves,” he continued. “So they begin to invite other actors to join in.

“That’s what that fellow outside was doing. He wanted revenge for something, and he chose us to play a part. If we had accepted his restrictions, we’d be regretting it now. We would have been defeated. We would have agreed to participate in his miserable life and in his frustrations. “The man’s aggression was easy to see, so it was easy for us to refuse the role he wanted us to play. But other people also ‘invite’ us to behave like victims, when they complain about the unfairness of life, for example, and ask us to agree, to offer advice, to participate.” He looked into my eyes. “Be careful. When you join in that game, you always wind up losing.”

The universe always helps us fight for our dreams, no matter how foolish they may be. Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.”

“I know that,” I answered. “I’ve been in love before. It’s like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You’re not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes, and forget them for three hours. “But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he’s not there, you feel like an addict who can’t get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you’re willing to do anything for love.” “What a horrible way to put it,” he said.

“I’m surprised that after all you’ve been through, you still keep the faith.” “I haven’t kept it. I lost it and recovered it.”

“She is the feminine face of God. She has her own divinity.”

“One of the faces of God is the face of a woman.”

“Why is water the symbol of the feminine face of God?” “I don’t know. But She normally chooses that medium to manifest Herself. Maybe because She is the source of life; we are generated in water, and for nine months we live in it. Water is the symbol of the power of woman, the power that no man—no matter how enlightened or perfect he may be—can capture.” He paused for a moment and then began again. “In every religion and in every tradition, She manifests Herself in one form or another—She always manifests Herself. Since I am a Catholic, I perceive Her as the Virgin Mary.”

I began to imagine I was immersed in water, in the maternal womb—where time and thought do not exist.

“As far as the priest was concerned, only God could have existed from the very beginning—and God, as far as anyone could tell, was a man.”

God—if God really existed—was both Father and Mother.

Love doesn’t need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself.

I began to imagine how I would like to be living right at that moment. I wanted to be happy, curious, joyful—living every moment intensely, drinking the water of life thirstily. Believing again in my dreams. Able to fight for what I wanted.

I observed the woman I had been up until then: weak but trying to give the impression of strength. Fearful of everything but telling herself it wasn’t fear—it was the wisdom of someone who knew what reality was. Putting up shutters in front of windows to keep the joy of the sun from entering—just so the sun’s rays wouldn’t fade my old furniture.

I looked at the Other, there in the corner of the room—fragile, exhausted, disillusioned. Controlling and enslaving what should really be free: her emotions. Trying to judge her future loves by the rules of her past suffering. But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.

The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek u...

I also knew that from this moment on I was going to experience heaven and hell, joy and pain, dreams and hopelessness; that I would no longer be capable of containing the winds that blew from the hidden corners of my soul. I knew that from this moment on love would be my guide—and that it had waited to lead me ever since childhood, when I had felt love for the first time.

“The Buddhists were right, the Hindus were right, the Muslims were right, and so were the Jews. Whenever someone follows the path to faith—sincerely follows it—he or she is able to unite with God and to perform miracles.

God is the same, even though He has a thousand names; it is up to us to select a name for Him.”

“We are our own greatest surprise,” he said. “Faith as tiny as a grain of sand allows us to move mountains.

even when at the end, after everyone had fled, only She, another woman, and one of them stood at the foot of the cross, bearing the laughter of His enemies and the cowardice of His friends; “Thy will be done.”

Thy will be done, my Lord. Because you know the weakness in the heart of your children, and you assign each of them only the burden they can bear. May you understand my love—because it is the only thing I have that is really mine, the only thing that I will be able to take with me into the next life. Please allow it to be courageous and pure; please make it capable of surviving the snares of the world.

Well, then, go there and resolve any doubts you may have,’ he said. ‘Remain out there in the world, or come back to the seminary. But you have to be committed to the place you choose. A divided kingdom cannot defend itself from its adversaries. A divided person cannot face life in a dignified way.’”

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.

A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place.

This was the first lesson I had learned about love. The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways—and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don’t know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.

Only that the priests take a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience.” I wondered whether I should go on and decided that I would. “And that they judge the sins of others, even though they may commit the same sins themselves. That they know all there is to know about marriage and love, but they never marry. That they threaten us with the fires of hell for mistakes that they themselves make. And they present God to us as a vengeful being who blames man for the death of His only Son.” The padre laughed. “You’ve had an excellent Catholic education,” he said. “But I’m not asking you about Catholicism. I’m asking about the spiritual life.”

“God is here, right now, at our side. We can see Him in this mist, in the ground we’re walking on, even in my shoes. His angels keep watch while we sleep and help us in our work. In order to find God, you have only to look around.

“I hope that you accept God’s gifts,” he answered. “Because it hasn’t always been that way, as history teaches us. Osiris was drawn and quartered in Egypt. The Greek gods battled because of the mortals on earth. The Aztecs expelled Quetzalcoatl. The Viking gods witnessed the burning of Valhalla because of a woman. Jesus was crucified. Why?” I didn’t have an answer. “Because God came to earth to demonstrate His power to us. We are a part of His dream, and He wants His dream to be a happy one. Thus, if we acknowledge that God created us for happiness, then we have to assume that everything that leads to sadness and defeat is our own doing. That’s the reason we always kill God, whether on the cross, by fire, through exile, or simply in our hearts.”

“There are several similar scientific studies. The most common explanation is that when a certain number of people evolve, the entire human race begins to evolve. We don’t know how many people are needed—but we know that’s how it works.”

“Do you see these mountains surrounding us?” he started in. “They don’t pray; they are already a part of God’s prayers. They have found their place in the world, and here they will stay. They were here before people looked to the heavens, heard thunder, and wondered who had created all of this. We are born, we suffer, we die, and the mountains endure.

I try to say that when a certain number of people have enough faith to change the scenario, all of the others—everywhere on the planet—will benefit. But they don’t believe me. They do nothing.” “They are like the mountains,” I said. “The mountains are beautiful. Anyone who beholds them has to think about the grandness of creation. They are living proof of the love that God feels for us, but their fate is merely to give testimony. They are not like the rivers, which move and transform what is around them.” “Yes. But why not be like the mountains?” “Maybe because the fate of mountains is terrible,” I answered. “They are destined to look out at the same scene forever.”

the smooth inebriation that helps us to say and hear things that are difficult.

Our parents taught us to be careful with glasses and with our bodies. They taught us that the passions of childhood are impossible, that we should not flee from priests, that people cannot perform miracles, and that no one leaves on a journey without knowing where they are going.

I held on to his shoulder. My loved one guided my steps through the darkness, knowing that we would see the light again and that it would bring us joy. Perhaps in our future there would be moments when the situation was reversed—when I would guide him with the same love and certainty until we reached a safe place and could rest together.

We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.

It’s easy to suffer because you love a person, or the world, or your son. That’s the kind of suffering that you accept as a part of life; it’s a noble, grand sort of suffering. It’s easy to suffer for a cause or a mission; this ennobles the heart of the person suffering.

“Love perseveres. It’s men who change.”

“Kenan Rifai says that when people praise us we should watch how we behave,” says J, “because that means that we hide our faults very well. We end up believing that we are better than we thought and then the next step is to let ourselves be lulled into a false sense of security that will eventually set up dangers all around us.”

“If you have only two opportunities, learn how to turn them into twelve. When you have twelve they will multiply automatically. That is why Jesus says: ‘he who has a lot will have a lot more given. He who has little will have that little taken from him.’” “That is one of the harshest sentences in the Gospels. But I have noticed throughout my life that it is absolutely true. So how can we identify the opportunities?” “‘Pay attention to every moment, because the opportunity—the ‘magic moment’—is within our reach, although we always let it pass by because we feel guilty.’” “Pay attention to every moment, because the opportunity—the ‘magic moment’—is within our reach, although we always let it pass by because we feel guilty. So try not to waste your time blaming yourself; the universe will see to correcting you if you’re not worthy of what you’re doing.” “And how is the universe going to correct me?” “It won’t be through tragedies; these happen because they are part of life, and they should not be thought of as punishments. The universe generally shows us that we are wrong when it takes away what is most important to us: our friends.