Read Online Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections by Paulo Coelho - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paulo Coelho
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understanding that the next minute could be their last on the face of this planet.
The journalist leaves, and I sit down at the computer and decide to write this. I know it’s not a topic anyone likes to think about, but I have a duty to my readers – to make them think about the important things in life. And death is possibly the most important thing. We are all walking towards death, but we never know when death will touch us and it is our duty, therefore, to look around us, to be grateful for each minute. But we should also be grateful to death, because it makes us think about the importance of each decision we take, or fail to take; it makes us stop doing anything that keeps us stuck in the category of the ‘living dead’ and, instead, urges us to risk everything, to bet everything on those things we always dreamed of doing, because, whether we like it or not, the angel of death is waiting for us.
Restoring the Web
I n New York, I meet up for afternoon tea with a rather unusual artist. She works in a bank in Wall Street, but one day she had a dream, in which she was told to visit twelve different places in the world and, in each one of those places, to create a painting or a sculpture in Nature itself.
So far, she has managed to make four such works. She shows me photos of one of them – a carving of an Indian inside a cave in California. While she waits for further signs to be revealed to her in dreams, she continues working at the bank, and that way earns enough money to travel and to carry out her task.
I ask her why she does it.
‘In order to maintain the equilibrium of the world,’ she replies. ‘It may sound like nonsense, but there is a tenuous web around us all, which we can make stronger or weaker depending on how we behave. We can save or destroy many things with a simple gesture that might, at times, seem utterly pointless. My dreams may be nonsense too, but I don’t want to run the risk of not following them. For me, human relationships are like a vast, fragile spider’s web. What I’m trying to do with my work is to restore part of that web.’
These Are My Friends
‘T he reason the king is so powerful is because he’s made a pact with the Devil,’ a very devout woman in the street told the boy, and he was intrigued.
Some time later, when he was travelling to another town, the boy heard a man beside him remark:
‘All this land belongs to the same man. I’d say the Devil had a hand in that.’
Late one summer afternoon, a beautiful woman walked past the boy.
‘That woman is in the service of Satan!’ cried a preacher angrily.
From then on, the boy decided to seek the Devil out, and when he found him, he said:
‘They say you can make people powerful, rich, and beautiful.’
‘Not really,’ replied the Devil. ‘You’ve just been listening to the views of those who are trying to promote me.’
How Do We Survive?
I receive through the post three litres of a product intended to provide a substitute for milk. A Norwegian company wants to know if I’m interested in investing in the production of this new kind of food because, in the opinion of the expert David Rietz: ‘ALL [his capitals] cow’s milk contains 59 active hormones, a great deal of fat, cholesterol, dioxins, bacteria and viruses.’
I think of the calcium that, when I was a child, my mother said was so good for my bones; but the expert is ahead of me: ‘Calcium? Where do cows get calcium for their big bones? Yes, from plants!’ Naturally, this new product is plant-based, and milk is condemned on the basis of innumerable studies carried out by various institutes dotted around the world.
And protein? David Rietz is implacable: ‘Milk can be thought of as “liquid meat” [I never have, but he must know what he’s talking about] because of its high protein content. But it is the protein which may actually leach calcium from the body. Countries that consume high protein diets also have the highest rates of
The journalist leaves, and I sit down at the computer and decide to write this. I know it’s not a topic anyone likes to think about, but I have a duty to my readers – to make them think about the important things in life. And death is possibly the most important thing. We are all walking towards death, but we never know when death will touch us and it is our duty, therefore, to look around us, to be grateful for each minute. But we should also be grateful to death, because it makes us think about the importance of each decision we take, or fail to take; it makes us stop doing anything that keeps us stuck in the category of the ‘living dead’ and, instead, urges us to risk everything, to bet everything on those things we always dreamed of doing, because, whether we like it or not, the angel of death is waiting for us.
Restoring the Web
I n New York, I meet up for afternoon tea with a rather unusual artist. She works in a bank in Wall Street, but one day she had a dream, in which she was told to visit twelve different places in the world and, in each one of those places, to create a painting or a sculpture in Nature itself.
So far, she has managed to make four such works. She shows me photos of one of them – a carving of an Indian inside a cave in California. While she waits for further signs to be revealed to her in dreams, she continues working at the bank, and that way earns enough money to travel and to carry out her task.
I ask her why she does it.
‘In order to maintain the equilibrium of the world,’ she replies. ‘It may sound like nonsense, but there is a tenuous web around us all, which we can make stronger or weaker depending on how we behave. We can save or destroy many things with a simple gesture that might, at times, seem utterly pointless. My dreams may be nonsense too, but I don’t want to run the risk of not following them. For me, human relationships are like a vast, fragile spider’s web. What I’m trying to do with my work is to restore part of that web.’
These Are My Friends
‘T he reason the king is so powerful is because he’s made a pact with the Devil,’ a very devout woman in the street told the boy, and he was intrigued.
Some time later, when he was travelling to another town, the boy heard a man beside him remark:
‘All this land belongs to the same man. I’d say the Devil had a hand in that.’
Late one summer afternoon, a beautiful woman walked past the boy.
‘That woman is in the service of Satan!’ cried a preacher angrily.
From then on, the boy decided to seek the Devil out, and when he found him, he said:
‘They say you can make people powerful, rich, and beautiful.’
‘Not really,’ replied the Devil. ‘You’ve just been listening to the views of those who are trying to promote me.’
How Do We Survive?
I receive through the post three litres of a product intended to provide a substitute for milk. A Norwegian company wants to know if I’m interested in investing in the production of this new kind of food because, in the opinion of the expert David Rietz: ‘ALL [his capitals] cow’s milk contains 59 active hormones, a great deal of fat, cholesterol, dioxins, bacteria and viruses.’
I think of the calcium that, when I was a child, my mother said was so good for my bones; but the expert is ahead of me: ‘Calcium? Where do cows get calcium for their big bones? Yes, from plants!’ Naturally, this new product is plant-based, and milk is condemned on the basis of innumerable studies carried out by various institutes dotted around the world.
And protein? David Rietz is implacable: ‘Milk can be thought of as “liquid meat” [I never have, but he must know what he’s talking about] because of its high protein content. But it is the protein which may actually leach calcium from the body. Countries that consume high protein diets also have the highest rates of
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