For all those who haven't read "The Alchemist", and thus are terribly missing bliss, here is the story in brief. The story made sense to me...but at the end of the day raised questions too!
A young boy leaves his home in search of "Secret of happiness". While wandering through an old city, he comes across a palace where an old king stayed. The boy meets king and asks whether he knew the secret of happiness. The king says yes and asks the boy to have a round in his palace but holding a spoon of oil in his hand. The boy, takes the spoon full of oil, and goes around to watch the exotic things, beautiful pictures and the artwork in the palace. When he returns back to the king, the king asks "You saw the beautiful palace and the exquisite things, but where are my drops of oil? You have dropped them being unaware of them". The boy looks at the empty spoon and looks back at the king questioningly. The king tells the boy. "The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels in the world & never forget the drops of oil in the spoon"
Now, i got the noble point of the king and really appreciated his concern for the drops of oil...(with price of oil hovering around $135/barrel, he has every right to get annoyed :P)
Jokes apart, what matters is how early in your life and how accurately you ascertain your "drops of oil". It's a task in itself and a great pursuit to know your prioritie. Time changes, people change, perspective changes. And in spite of all these if your "drops of oil" don't change then you are doing ok...thereafter the real challenge will start to protect them from your running around. As far as I am concerned, no question of protecting them, since I don't know what exactly they are!!! :) :(
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"The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels in the world & never forget the drops of oil in the spoon"
Nice one. :)
This is one of the story, I had loved about Alchemist.
Well, the drop of the oil is always a symbolic thing.
This story tells us to keep a balance between work and life.
The story had a second part,
When the boy knew from the king that, he needed to keep the oil intact while roaming around, and was asked to go and visit other parts of the mansion, he went being careful about the oil and got back to the king after the visit. Then the king said "wow, u have kept the oil intact this time, and tell me what all did u see?" The boy was speechless this time, he realized he did not see anything. He was just busy in keeping an eye on the oil in the spoon.
That's what most us do in general.
In pursuit of seeking a living, we forget to live.
This story tells us, Neither we can be happy with fulfilling only the responsibilities we have, nor having our desire fulfilled will provide us true joy.
To seek true happiness, we must live with a balance between our responsibilities and desires.
Is not it?
And there is no age for it. Each moment that we live on this earth, all through the life, we should have this in our attitude.
i didn't knew that the words i spoke up today in my dream were because i was to click this site today.... happiness is not something we enjoy intuitively ... its something that passes us which we need to grasp and if we let that go we will certainly regret for what we missed.
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