Hippie

by Paulo Coelho

She had excelled in school, was terrific at sports, was the most beautiful of all her classmates (and knew it), and had never had any trouble finding a boyfriend. Even so, she preferred her solitude. Solitude. Her greatest pleasure. The origin of her dream of traveling to Nepal was to find a cave and remain there alone until her teeth fell out, her hair became white, the local villagers stopped bringing her food; spending her final sunset looking at the snow, nothing more. Alone. Her school friends envied her easygoing way with the boys, her college friends admired her for her independence and for knowing exactly what she wanted, and the people at work were always stunned and surprised by her creativity—in the end, she was the perfect woman, queen of the mountain, the lioness of the jungle, savior of lost souls. She had received marriage proposals since the day she turned eighteen, from all sorts of people—but above all, rich men, who added to their proposals a series of collateral benefits, such as gifts of jewelry (two diamond rings—of the many she’d received—were enough to pay for her ticket to Nepal and leave plenty to live on for a long time to come). Anytime she received an expensive gift, she warned her suitor that she would not return it in the event they separated. The men would chuckle; they were used to being challenged by other men, more powerful than she, and didn’t take her seriously. They ended up falling into the abyss she’d created around herself, and it w...