Respecting My Surroundings

The Real Treasure

“(It’s)Always gonna be an uphill battle, and sometimes I’m gonna have to lose. It ain’t about how fast I get there. Ain’t about what’s waitin’ on the other side. It’s the climb.” (Miley Cyrus-‘it’s the climb’) In the novel The Alchemist, Santiago a shepherd boy who lives in Andalusia, Spain, makes a challenging decision to depart his homeland to search for a treasure he has dreamt of. His long journey takes him across the sea to Africa, through the vast Sahara desert, and onto the Great Pyramids of Egypt, before he finally returns home. Along the way, Santiago encounters many obstacles and meets a variety of new people. All of his adventures affect him and help him as he struggles to get closer to his goal. Santiago possesses qualities such as confidence, bravery and resilience that successfully helped him on his long journey to achieving his destiny.

To fulfil his destiny, Santiago had to overcome many obstacles and gain much confidence. Some of the obstacles he had encountered during his journey were positive ones, such as meeting Fatima. Knowing that she loved him, trusted him deeply and believed in him, gave him the confidence to continue his journey, knowing that she will be waiting for him and he will return. Unfortunately, some of the obstacles he had to go through were negative. One of those obstacles was travelling through the treacherous, long desert. He had travelled the desert for so long, and there had been so many casualties, he still was confident enough to keep moving. Even when Santiago and the Alchemist were captured by those enemies in war, he still had lots of confidence in him to succeed. The Alchemist said that Santiago will transform himself into the wind. If he could not, they would humbly offer their lives to the enemies. Not once in the entire novel did Santiago the young shepherd boy back down and gave up, and this was a very important part of his and the alchemist’s lives. At this point Santiago needed lots of confidence to push him forward and to let nothing in his path. Santiago had many acts of confidence in the novel, when Santiago had finished working with the crystal merchant in Tangier, he describes how easy it was and he compares it to the world: “Tangier was no longer a strange city, and he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world.” (Coelho 59) For a young boy to think he could conquer the world would take a huge amount of confidence and would almost be impossible. As Santiago overcame these obstacles, and grew much more in confidence, he also improved himself by becoming braver.

From the beginning of the book, Santiago had always been brave, but his adventures and journeys took his bravery to a higher level. First, leaving his home town Andalusia, Santiago was brave enough to start his long journey on his own for the quest of the treasure he had dreamt of. Even as an adult, that is a huge responsibility and choice to make. Before he left his home town, he was already alone, taking care of sheep and living by himself. Imagine yourself, alone in the enormous scary world with no one to care for you or love you. Would you succeed? It is really difficult for a boy hitting his early teenage years to live in a world like this and still have great success in mostly all the important obstacles. This shows that Santiago has a huge amount of bravery. Later, Santiago meets and falls in love with Fatima. He was tempted to give up his dreams and his journey to find his destiny, to stay and live with Fatima. Both Fatima and the Alchemist encourage him to continue his journey despite the dangers and consequences. It would take a really brave person to make that breathtaking decision. Apparently, Santiago was that person: following his destiny by continuing his journey and coming back for Fatima when he had accomplished his destiny. Finally, Santiago was ready and brave enough to die. He didn’t care about his whole life, he only cared about what was important to him. At one point in the book, just as Santiago had met the Alchemist with his horse for the first time, the author writes: “In his heart, he felt a strange sense of joy: he was about to die in pursuit of his destiny. And for Fatima.” (Coelho 105) although he hadn’t achieved everything that he wanted to in his life, he was still prepared to die even if it meant that he had failed or not accomplished his task. Santiago is a very brave boy who is still learning about life. His experiences on his journey teach him not to give up or quit and these obstacles have taught him to also be a very resilient person.

Resilience is defined as the 'ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like.’(Dictionary.com’) Throughout the whole novel, Santiago proved his resilience in many different ways. Early on in the book, Santiago hit a major obstacle taking place in Tangier when he had lost all his money and sheep. He could do nothing else but try to get a good start again. At his last hope, he stopped at a crystal shop where he offered to clean the merchant's crystals. The Merchant accepted his offer and Santiago did such an excellent job that he started working fulltime in the shop. Santiago was bouncing back up from having no luck before. He had been coming up with new brilliant ideas to help the merchant and even himself. Santiago had been earning money like he had never before. After almost a year, Santiago decided to leave and continue his journey. He bought 60 more sheep, and he was off to a great start. From this evidence, it shows that Santiago has lots of resilience and obviously bounced back up and recovered. Near the end of his arduous journey, he is walking through the terrifying desert with the alchemist beside him teaching Santiago many learning’s and understandings. Enemies eventually find them wandering in the desert and take Santiago and the alchemist back to their camp as prisoners. This was obviously a problem because Santiago could no longer continue his journey. Instead of waiting to be rescued, they create an agreement with the enemies that the boy must turn himself into the wind. If he does, Santiago and the Alchemist will be freed. This shows much resilience because they are not sitting back and waiting to be rescued, they are trying their hardest to get themselves out of a difficult situation. Lastly, when Santiago had just left the Alchemist, he ran into another major obstacle when he was attacked by a group of men at the pyramids. Instead of running away, Santiago stood his ground. He waited until all the men except one left: “The boy stood up shakily and looked once more at the pyramids. They seem to laugh at him, and he laughed back, his heart bursting with joy. Because now he knew where his treasure was.” (Coelho pg ) Even after having been through all that trouble, it is amazing how Santiago stands up, with a smile on his face, eager to keep on going. This shows a great amount of resilience because he doesn’t stop and he recovers in many ways with the intention to keep on going.

Santiago faced an uphill battle on his incredible journey towards finding his destiny; he possessed three unique traits that assisted him when making complicated and annoying decisions. He had the confidence to believe that he could achieve his destiny and fulfil his dream. He was brave enough to face the many challenges that he had encountered along the way, and he was resilient enough to recover strongly and quickly when ‘the climb’ seemed too difficult for such a young boy. Throughout the novel, Santiago was frustrated by the many obstacles that stood in his way, but he finally realized that the most important thing of all was the journey itself. The actual treasure didn’t matter to him so much after all. The experiences, the understandings and the learnings were the real treasure.

Respect by Kenneth Fletcher

Beginning at the age of 4, I learnt the value of respect when I first started at ISKL. The Melawati Way encouraged me to respect others, respect this place and respect myself, and I continue to follow this way of life. I always do my best to try and listen to others and consider their feelings, whether I'm in class or playing a sport. For me I am considerate about other peoples race, gender, religion or age. I have a huge amount of respect and concern for my surroundings. Throughout my whole life, I show my respect by not littering, encouraging my family to compost and participating in recycling activities. Of course there is always more room for improvement, and to find more ways to show respect for myself. I am proud of my achievements and I work really hard to be the best I can in life. But, to have more respect for myself, I have to improve on being confident enough to achieve my destiny. I am lucky that respect is one of the middle school core values because I am encouraged to pursue my destiny everyday. The Melawati Way has become permanently part of my life and it has been extremely helpful as I participate in my journey.