The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho's bestseller The Alchemist is an easy read. It is a spiritual novel, telling a story of a shepherd boy named Santiago who pursued his dream of finding the treasure at the Pyramid in Egypt. What happens during his journey from southern Spain to the Pyramid transforms the boy's life, a miraculous alchemical experience. 

The book aims to inspire: We all have our personal dreams, but often we ignore them because either we fear the difficulties to pursue them or we are distracted by other things. If we do take the path instructed by our hearts, we will have great life experiences no matter whether we eventually find the treasure or not.

The book reads like a fable, full of language of spirituality and big-letter words: Personal Legend, the Language of the World, the Soul of the World, Love, etc. Ten years ago, this would have been a perfect book to read, to inspire me to do what I wanted to do. Since I have passed that initiation stage, the book feels less relevant now, and somewhat even dry, didactic, and repetitive. My personal experience says things more visceral and powerful than what a fable offers. Nonetheless, the book does have some insightful lines. Here is one: 

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

This is very true. We are often afraid of initiating things different because we think they are difficult. Only to a certain degree. The difficulties are to stop those who only want these things superficially. If you want something badly, nothing can stop you, and actually you will find it not so hard to pursue it anyway. Internal conviction is much more difficult than any external difficulties that you can imagine. 

That is my experience eight years ago - eight years, woo, that is a long time. In late September that year, after more than two years of deliberation and struggling, I eventually decided to make the change, not just at the level of mental entertainment or confiding to a few close friends, but to act definitely - email the professors, talk to the people in the field, etc. It is true that once I did all these, a sign of my wanting it seriously, the whole world conspired to help me. I received lots of positive feedbacks and encouragements; I developed more concrete ideas to make the transition; I even found a person that had similar experiences as me. Three months later, on that unforgettable Saturday morning, I sat together with KC in his office and nailed the matter. That was pretty quick, wasn't it. But I don't want to de-emphasize the difficulty of the process. The difficulty resides, however, not in the process itself, but in the process of convincing myself to follow my heart, to pursue my "Personal Legend." That process is pretty damn hard. 

So in the fifth-year of my last PhD pursuit, my life underwent a drastic and decisive transformation. Now I am in the fifth-year of my current PhD study, reading The Alchemist. If nothing else, the book is reassuring, and elicits a sense of déjà-vu. I was there, like Santiago, taking a journey to pursue my dream. Now I am on the path that I chose, and moving forward to find my "treasure." It is a wonderful feeling.

Sayonara, Ayu san!

I met Ayu san when we both took Allan's course on the history of medicine a few years ago. She was a visiting scholar, doing research on athlete foot. In one section, we discussed a book called Modern Period - how 20th century American women embraced modern hygiene to manage their menstrual cycles. Ayu san said, in a dramatic yet assertive way, that Japanese women have the ability to control their periods. This amazed the American audience. 

And that showed Ayu san's character. She has great interest in, and actually believe in, certain things that we might regard mystical or even superstitious. We have talked about, on multiple occasions, her experiences with psychic readers. The messages she received from them became pivotal guides for her life, especially her personal life. This strong spiritual commitment provided her confidence and reassurance that sustains her life. 

On the surface, Ayu san is one of those achievers, finishing her degree quickly and obtaining one of the most competitive post-docs in Japan. She constantly works, even if she is aware of its caveats. But when I talked to her more, I found her quite an honest and warm person. She is one of my few friends to whom I can confide personal feelings about life, especially love life. She has a clear vision of what she is looking for, a vision gained from her psychic reader. It is a high, and unconventional ideal, maybe too high to be practical. Sometimes I felt conflicted when she asked advice from me. Should I encourage her? Should I recommend she be more realistic? I don't know. I see myself in her. 

"I have to believe in it, right, Yan san? Otherwise, how can I make it happen?"

Something in the past also bothered her - the tragic death of her former advisor. She has been trying to find the reason, but with no avail. In front of death, we all become powerless. This unpleasant memory lingers with Ayu san: underneath her ambitious and assertive face lies a vulnerable and sad heart. 

Ayu san is leaving, going back to Japan. People come and go, very typical of Cambridge culture. Whichever the pathway that Ayu san is taking, I wish her best luck. A person like her - sincere, idealistic, caring, and vulnerable, deserves a good life.

The Masters

CP Snow took over 30 years (1920s-1950s) to write The Masters, a novel on the academic life in an imaginary university in England. The plot is rather simple: The master of an old, prestigious university is about to pass away, so a new master must be elected. Faculty members presented two candidates: Jago, a professor in Humanities who has great ambition, strong social skills, but less of an academic achievement; Crawford, a professor in Science who is an established scholar, yet not as adept in human connections. Written in a first-person narrative in the eyes of one of the faculty, the book delineates the process of the election through a series of negotiations, persuasions, and power struggling. 

Snow is famous for his idea of "two cultures," i.e., the culture of Science and the culture of Humanities in academia. But the book strikes me not by the distinct characteristics of these two cultures but by a shared mentality that defines academic life, or more precisely, academic politics. As the heart of the contentious election lies the ambition, ideal, and self-interest of individuals. Both candidates desired the position badly, and they used all strategies, not always noble, to achieve their goal. The book is not an "exposé" of the dark side of academia, however. It is rather a sober reminder of the importance of social relationships and individual characters in shaping academic life.

In the eyes of Eliot, the narrator, each faculty member involved in this election has his own character. Eliot aligns himself with Jago, the candidate in Humanities. Why? Because Jago prefers self-torment than conceit. Ago is vulnerable in his own eyes. He is proud and diffident at the same time. Maybe at the deepest level, pride and diffidence becomes the same (p204). I resonate with this connection though it is hard to articulate why. Pride comes from within, from an attitude of pursuing something high and noble, with intrinsic values. Diffidence implies connection or comparison to others, how one positions oneself in a social network. We can do things that we feel proud of because they fulfill our moral needs. But that is a self-centered sentiment. Often times we don't experience that pride fully until what we do is socially recognized, or even better, appreciated. But that departs from one's own perspective; we are asking others, often unconsciously, to agree with us that what we think is right and good is actually right and good for everybody. Every time we do a good, unselfish thing, with lots of pride, we plead appreciation from others. Yet we are not sure whether what works within us works interpersonally, so comes lots of diffidence. Can we do things truly altruistic, without considering being paid back, not in material sense, but in a sense of social recognition? Are we all like Jago or Crawford, whose pursuit of mastership evinces their insistence on such a recognition? I don't have the answer. But I want to say this: morality entwines with sociability. I often consider my urge to do good things is self-satisfaction derived from a pure pleasure to be helpful and useful. But how pure is the pleasure if the satisfaction is conditioned and mitigated by the reactions from the helped? What if that person does not say "Thank you?"