Fear
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
~ Paulo Coelho
~ Paulo Coelho
What Is Fake Within?
They do their best to say what they say, because they don’t want anyone go away unfulfilled. But if we have not been through pain in life, we cannot understand what pain is, we can only imagine its intensity. It’s easier to give it an absolute value and then multiply it with a valid superscript. But you can never read loss, you can only feel it. You can never measure pain, only go through it alone. And you cannot equate your life's sufferings to another man's, you can only 'relate' to them. Maybe I understand the meaning of rejection, where you only perceive it as a word in the dictionary, only because I can relate to it, and you can’t. If we have not been a victim of deception, how can we possibly understand the meaning of what is fake within? How can we expect a deaf man to believe in sound, how can we expect a mute to believe in voice, although it is there. Things like literature... some people get it, some people don’t. But those who try must remember that words can...
Comments
I just skimmed through your blog, brilliant writing!
:)
>> no heart has ever "suffered" when it goes in search of its dream.
umm.. i agree with the expressed sentiment. however, i believe this statement can be considered absolutely true only if "suffering" is defined as hardship/pain/challenges/abuse/betrayal/loss of material/loss of health etc. encountered when a person strays from their dreams.
in this sense the argument is circular. from the perspective of a neutral observer such a person probably appears sadistic. no?
Khany, this quote struck me in a very specific frame of mind. From what i think, it refers to the fact that when you set out to find answers, the journey is worth it, even if the answers aren't. When we follow our dreams, there are no guarantees, but we would rather not be on any other path than the one that leads us to them.
& hence, no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
but i also realize that on any journey, and specially along this journey, there are difficulties, challenges, sacrifices, etc. usually we refer to these experiences as suffering; do we not?
let me put it this way. my gut feeling is that if ask a university student about their student experience most likely they will tell you it is a tremendous suffering. ask them a few years (or better yet a few decades) later and they will probably recall those years as amongst the best they have lived.
the only way i can reconcile these paradoxical descriptions, which i believe are both completely honest, is if i (re)define suffering as the quotation suggests:
suffering is the hardship experienced on a journey that does lead to realized dreams nor to lessons learned.
... but then i ask you is there any hardship except that we come out of it having learned a lesson?
Its like what my mother told me when i was a kid... she said that we put 'matti ke bartan' in a heated chamber to make them strong to explain to me why we have to suffer so many difficulties in life. She said that the pot doesn't get it, but its something that has to happen to it.
Like when in the Alchemist, the guy travels all the way to another part of the world and finds out that the treasure was right under the tree of the place he used to live. We could match it with an irony, or we could perceive it as an experience that opened his mind to a different dimension. If he had found the treasure earlier, he wouldn't have seen life that way. I often wonder that the experience was far more worth it than the treasure itself.
My point is, that we think that we may have suffered a lot, but at some point, we don't regret having those experiences. I admit that things don't make sense all the time, but it doesn't mean that the suffering is not worth it. God has a plan for everyone, so in that context, i think that the sufferings are there for a reason, and in the same context i think that no heart suffers when it goes out for the search of its dream.