On this, the day of celebrating Korean independence from Japanese occupation, I found myself thinking about a book I recently read called The Alchemist, written by Paulo Coelho. It’s a fairly spiritual book about following your dreams, essentially. The main character learns to overcome his inertia and fear to do what he really wants to do—find treasure—and is ultimately quite successful because he learns to listen to his heart, etc. It is a very heart-warming story in many ways, but I was thinking today that it really doesn’t mirror the real world at all. Sure, for many people, it is simply their own fears that stand in the way of achieving their dreams and given the willpower, they will be successful. I’m sure this book is helpful for them, much in the same way it could perhaps be beneficial to me. But then there are a great many people who face much greater obstacles in life and it’s not simply a matter of becoming brave or strong that will transform their futures. How terrible is this? Some of us have the opportunity to do whatever we want, be who we want, and we need a silly fable to spur us on the path of goodness and happiness, while there are others who would kill for the same position but are coldly and firmly rejected?
I was spurred to this train of thought in responding to a recent letter I received from a former student of mine in South Africa. I worked with a volunteer organization at the University of Cape Town when I studied abroad there in the spring of 2005 and taught environmental education to some high school students in Khayelitsha, a very poor township near the city. I’ve been sending some of them infrequent postcards, but I hadn’t heard from any of them in over a year and was finally about to give up on them. This particular student was very bright and wonderfully kind. I remember when my mom visited he was so nice to her—just the perfect gentleman. He wrote to offer his congratulations on my job and to tell me about his current situation. He apparently graduated last year and has spent the time since then trying to find a way to continue his studies, to no avail, and now he’s broken up about it. The note had more than a tinge of potential suicide in it and I am very concerned about him. I really feel terrible, but what can I do? I have some money, sure, but not enough for tuition. Yet, I need at least try to do something or I might as well just hang up by hat as a sensitive and aware person right now and just give up on humanity in general. If I can’t even bother to help my friends who need it so, what does that say about the world? But then again, what does it say about the world when educational opportunity is so firmly barred to such a deserving person? For him, it’s not a matter of summoning the courage to follow his dreams. It’s a matter of cold hard cash, which is virtually impossible to get in a place like South Africa. I’ve been thinking about this for over a week now, since I received the letter, and I have no idea what to do. I suppose it’s most appropriate to follow the advice of Coelho himself, cast aside my fears, and follow my dream (or as he calls it, my “Personal Legend”). My dream, of course, is to make this world a better place in whatever way I can. How can I shun this opportunity? Oh, if only this were as easy as finding treasure!