I’ve been following Paolo Coelho on Twitter; one time, he tweeted this quote from one of his most famous books, The Alchemist:

When you want something, the whole Universe conspires to help you realize your desire.

It got me thinking, it can’t be true, can it? What if people want the same thing? Who will get it? Will it be a fair win just in case? I’m sure that’s not really how the writer sees it; that there’s some truth behind those words that can only be understood by those whose hearts are open, but I can only think of a particular, albeit funny,  situation wherein I got the exact opposite. Let’s just say that there is this something that I really wanted to have; so I prayed for the heavens to give me a sign that it’s indeed for me, and me alone. A few days after, it was gone. Poof! Just like that. But I am a believer in destiny and all that crap, so after a few years I asked for it again. A couple of days after, I got the news that it’s gone out of my reach, the very same day that I prayed out loud for it.  I wish I can give you the sordid details because this is quite funny, but the shame is very much on my part so just take my word that that quote? Not for me. But who knows, maybe I’ll try out that theory again someday;  retest the waters, and hope that they used water softeners this time  for my sake.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
— Maya Angelou

Sometimes I get too preoccupied with the former. That is why I need quotes such as this one to remind me of the things that I may be doing wrong or taking for granted. With so many stuff to occupy one’s fancy, how do you choose which one to give your devotion to? In my life, I have the necessary and the unnecessary. What makes me happy is beyond category; or so I’d like to think, because quite frankly it doesn’t happen often that things take my breath away.  I wish it would, though. And I wish that I’d at least learn to prioritize; sometimes I feel like I’m steering towards the wrong path and worrying about improbable destinies, like buying dash kits before even owning a car. I think it would be beautiful, though – to have your breath taken away sometimes.

I guess every person has somebody who depends on him or her. Sometimes, it can’t be helped that it gets too much for one person to carry. The responsibility. I spent much too many hours lying in beds and staring at ceiling fans, wondering who I am to depend to at my times of need, while other people depend on me.  I do not have a ready answer and may well be  the nonexistent answer has always been my personal choice. But I still believe that there is a silver lining in all these somewhere. I still don’t regret any sacrifice, any seemingly wrong decision done for the sake of taking on this vocation. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.”

— Albert Einstein

I spent my Sunday and Monday afternoons aboard a bus, taking two 4-hour trips that could have been mind-numbingly boring if I didn’t allow my mind to wander while looking out the rain-drenched window. For some reason, banners on the streets always get my attention. Well, that reason could be that they are sometimes so huge, unlike vinyl banners you may see on smaller, closed spaces. I saw familiar faces, some new announcements, some funny adverts, some mouth-watering pictures of foods/dishes that I wouldn’t normally go for. But looking out the window like that, with the bus going some kilometers per hour, if you let your mind wander enough, it could bring you to places you didn’t intend to go to.

Sometimes people come to a moment where they think they’ve found that one last chance to be someone else. And they go for it. When it doesn’t work out, they spend the rest of their lives looking back over their shoulder, at what might’ve been.  -  Allie Keys, from the TV series Taken

I saw this banner of a celebrity who used to have really dark skin and is now sporting a much, much fairer one. “You can be like me,” is what it says.  The ad was skin deep. But it makes you think that people do want to be something else sometimes. Beyond the superficiality, there is an inherent discontentment in every person’s life that somehow gets the better of us sometimes.  There’s always this sense that we can be something better, no matter how hard we try, no matter how we strive to take another step forward. Of course, people’s ambitions differ. Looking at that ad made me think of a lot of things that I want to change in myself. It just so happens that having whiter skin is no longer something I covet at all.

The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don’t care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn’t matter to anyone who isn’t him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life.”

— Chuck Klosterman

I think everybody feels a bit out of place in life—like they’ve been slightly miscast or incorrectly routed. We’re wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn’t, we start looking around for the real world.

-Lev Grossman, TIME magazine book critic and author of the new book The Magicians

“What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted to create something live and shocking enough that it could stand beside a morning in somebody’s life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that. What foolishness.”

-Richard Brown (from The Hours by Michael Cunningham)

I have no words to describe what I feel about this passage. Fortunately, I can borrow Jonathan Safran Foer’s voice:

“There’s no greater feeling than inspiring someone. That might even be the point of art.”

from The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning

“Anyone whose goal is ’something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

How do you know if it’s time to let go of a dream ? When do you say that you have to give up a fight? I do not have lofty dreams or big-time aspirations. Someone asked me recently about my plans in life. I do not have a ready answer. Maybe I really have none. But my thoughts are not with myself but with someone else’s plight. It makes me feel like I’m on a fool’s errand, trying to provide encouragement to someone else when I cannot even see the light in my own seemingly never-ending tunnel. Trying to come up with something positive to impart is not as easy as writing a fat burner review, but somehow doing so strengthens my self-affirmation. Of the many ironies in life, I think I just found one of mine in a place where it comes full circle.

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”— Jane Austen

(words of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice)

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. ”

-C.S. Lewis

Isn’t it a wonder how some things are “unnecessary” and yet can be so profoundly elemental?

Update: Onyxx’s  comment below is worth mentioning because it’s actually along the lines of what I was thinking of when I quoted that. It all comes down to how you look at things, in this case how you regard friendships. But then, again, maybe it is relative to the people you regard as friends. There’s no grand debate here, though. Friendlessness is not a social security disability.