Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. He has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. He is the recipient of numerous international awards, among them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France’s Légion d’honneur. Paulo is most famous for his classic book, The Alchemist published in 1988 of which more than 65 million copies have been sold, making it one of the best-selling books in history. It has been translated into 71 different languages, the 71st being Maltese, winning the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author.
Born in 1947, Coelho’s life has truly been a multi-faceted journey. He was born in Rio de Janeiro and attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with “My dear, your father is an engineer. He’s a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?” After researching, Coelho concluded that a writer “always wears glasses and never combs his hair” and has a “duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation,” among other things.
At 16, Coelho’s introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. He later remarked that “It wasn’t that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn’t know what to do… They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me.”
As per his parents’ wishes, Coelho reluctantly enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started experimenting with drugs in the 1960s. Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian icon Raul Seixas. Composing with Raul led to Paulo being associated with magic and occultism, due to the content of some of his song lyrics.
In 1974, Coelho was arrested for “subversive” activities by the ruling military government, who had taken power ten years earlier and viewed his lyrics as left-wing and dangerous. Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.
In 1986, Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life. On the path, Coelho had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage.
In a 1986 interview, Coelho stated “I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water – to use the metaphor in The Alchemist, I was working, I had a person whom I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer.” Ultimately, Coelho abandoned his lucrative career as a songwriter to pursue writing full-time.
This week’s Inspiration is a passage excerpted from one of Coelho’s books: Manual of the Warrior Of The Light, a 1997 collection of Coelho’s thoughts and observations summed up into one volume:
Every Warrior of the Light
has felt afraid of going into battle.
Every Warrior of the Light
has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone.
Every Warrior of the Light
has trodden a path that was not his.
Every Warrior of the Light
has suffered for the most trivial of reasons.
Every Warrior of the Light
has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light.
Every Warrior of the Light
has failed in his spiritual duties.
Every Warrior of the Light
has said ‘yes’ when he wanted to say ‘no.’
Every Warrior of the Light
has hurt someone he loved.
That is why he is a Warrior of the Light,
Because he has been through all this
and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.
“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.” ? Henry Ward Beecher
Beecher’s quote is not only applicable in our judgment of others, but in judging ourselves, for truly the measure by which we measure will be measured out to us.
Have and AWE-full Weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacque’