Over christmas, I read the alchemist by Paulo Coelho. This book is about a boy named Santiago who a young, adventurous shepherd. He has a recurring dream that troubles him. In the dream, he is told, by a child, to seek treasure at the foot of pyramids in egypt. He goes to a gypsy to interpret what this dream meant. On one of his journeys to a small town, he meets a man called Melchizedek. He tells him that it is his personal legend to go to the pyramids. On his way to the pyramids, he gets robbed, works for a year, and learns many life lessons as he does so. Santiago falls in love with a girl named Fatima, in an oasis, but has to leave her to pursue his personal legend. He meets the alchemist who teaches him an important life lesson, and he continues his journey. He gets to the pyramids and begins to dig where he thought the treasure would be, but he gets beat up and left half dead. one of the men tell him about his dream that he gave up on. he says that there is a treasure hidden under a sycamore tree next to an abandoned church in Spain.
“…every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons that I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so.” pg 29
This quote means that if you ignore what has been put in your path, it will come back to haunt you. The Merchant’s eyes were opened to the possibilities of his dreams, so he was given the zeal to do them.