By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept

Paulo Coelho

viii. And with love, there are no rules. Some may try to control their emotions and develop strategies for their behavior; others may turn to reading books of advice from “experts” on relationships—but this is all folly. The heart decides, and what it decides is all that really matters.

            All of us have had this experience. At some point, we have each said through our tears, “I’m suffering for a love that’s not worth it.” We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because our love is going unrecognized. We suffer because we are unable to impose our own rules.

            But ultimately there is no good reason for our suffering, for in every love lies the seed of our growth.

ix. They have been joyful—because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender.

x. To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God.

2. “Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old,” he said.

            Perhaps love makes us old before our time—or young, if youth has passed. But how can I not recall those moments?

2. All love stories are the same.

4. I wanted to see him again; I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to sit with him in a café and remember the old days, when we had thought the world was far too large for anyone ever to know it truly.

8. You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

            Every day, God gives us the sun—and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived that moment, that it doesn’t exist—that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment… a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.

            Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment helps us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments—but all of this is transitory; it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken.

            Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won’t suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when that person looks back—and at some point everyone looks back—she will hear her heart saying, “What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage: the certainty that you wasted your life.”

            Pitiful are the people who must realize this. Because when they are finally able to believe in miracles, their life’s magic moments will have already passed them by.

10. I could have. What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but didn’t. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.

11. Then I surprised myself—perhaps because in seeing him, I had become a child again… or perhaps because we are not the ones who write the best moments of our lives.

15. “And we came to understand the cycle of creation, because our bodies repeat the rhythm of the moon.”

17. She turned to me. “I am what you see me to be. I am a part of the religion of the earth.”

            “What do you want from me?”

            “I can read your eyes. I can read your heart. You are going to fall in love. And suffer.”

            “I am?”

            “You know what I’m talking about. I saw how he was looking at you. He loves you.”

            This woman was really nuts!

            “That’s why I asked you to come with me—because he is important. Even though he says some silly things, at least he recognizes the Great Mother. Don’t let him lose his way. Help him.”

            “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re dreaming!” And I turned and rushed back into the traffic, swearing I’d forget everything she had said.

23. No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes. And any woman with the least bit of sensitivity can read the eyes of a man in love.

24. There! The world made a complete turn and returned to where it belonged. It wasn’t what I had been thinking; he was no longer insisting, he was ready to let me leave—a man in love doesn’t act that way.

27. If we are not reborn—if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm of childhood—it makes no sense to go on living.

30. No, I can’t think that way about my life. I’m going to have to return to it this week. It must be the wine. After all, when all is said and done, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. This is all a dream. It’s going to end.

            But how long can I make the dream go on?

33. In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire.

            Anything else is fantasy.

33. “The wise are wise only because they love. And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love.”

35. Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.

36. But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.

            For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.

39. Love is a trap.

            When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

45. “Don’t just fall into playing a role… Some people always have to be doing the battle with someone, sometimes even with themselves, battling with their own lives. So they begin to create a kind of play in their head, and they write the script based on their frustrations… But the worst part is that they cannot present the play by themselves,” he continued. “So they begin to invite other actors to join in… The man’s aggression was easy to see, so it was easy for us to refuse the role he wanted us to play. But other people also ‘invite’ us to behave like victims, when they complain about the unfairness of life, for example, and ask us to agree, to offer advice, to participate.”

            He looked into my eyes. “Be careful. When you join in that game, you always wind up losing.”

48. Why do we always do this? Why do we notice the speck in our eye but not the mountains, the fields, the olive groves?

49. Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown—even when we don’t want to and when we think we don’t need to.

50. It was a trap. Later, if I heard the song played on the radio or at a club, I’d think of him…

 51. “I admire the battle you are waging with your heart,” he had said at the restaurant.

            But he was wrong. Because I had fought with my heart and defeated it long ago. I was certainly not going to become passionate about something that was impossible. I knew my limits; I knew how much suffering I could bear.

53. I was tired of playing the child and acting the way many of my friends did—the ones who are afraid that love is impossible without even knowing what love is. If I stayed like that, I would miss out on everything good that these few days with him might offer.

56. “So we think so much about money and our plans for acquiring it that we discover we are alive only when our days on earth are practically done. And then it’s too late.”

56. “I am just like everyone else who listens to their heart: a person who is enchanted by the mystery of life. Who is open to miracles, who experiences joy and enthusiasm for what they do.”

56. “But there is suffering in life,” one of the listeners said.

            “And there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you’re fighting for.”

            “That’s it?” another listener asked.

            “Yes, that’s it. When I learned this, I resolved to become the person I had always wanted to be. The Other stood there in the corner of my room, watching me, but I will never let the Other into myself again—even though it has already tried to frighten me, warning me that it’s risky not to think about the future.

            “From the moment that I ousted the Other from my life, the Divine Energy began to perform its miracles.”

58. The gods throw the dice, and they don’t ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They don’t care if when you go, you leave behind a lover, a home, a career, or a dream. The gods don’t care whether you have it all, whether it seems that your every desire can be met through hard work and persistence. The gods don’t want to know about your plans and your hopes. Somewhere they’re throwing the dice—and you are chosen. From then on, winning or losing is only a question of luck.

            The gods throw the dice, freeing love from its cage. And love can create or destroy—depending on the direction of the wind when it is set free.

            For the moment, the wind was blowing in his favor. But the wind is as capricious as the gods—and deep inside myself, I had begun to feel some gusts.

59. At last, as if fate wanted to show me that the story of the Other was true—and the universe always conspires to help the dreamer—we found a house to stay in, with a room with separate beds.

59. “The universe always helps us fight for our dreams, no matter how foolish they may be. Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.”

60. “It’s risky, falling in love.”

61. “You’re upset,” he said at one point.

            Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart—someone with whom I could spend a little time without being afraid that I would lose him the next day. With that reassurance, the time would pass more slowly. We could be silent for a while because we’d know we had the rest of our lives together for conversation. I wouldn’t have to worry about serious matters, about difficult decisions and hard words.

63. This was a silence that spoke for itself. A silence that said we no longer needed to explain things to each other.

64. “And love’s path is really complicated,” he concluded.

77. Neither of us had said anything. Love doesn’t need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself.

79. I looked at the Other, there in the corner of the room—fragile, exhausted, disillusioned. Controlling and enslaving what should really be free: her emotions. Trying to judge her future loves by rules of her past suffering.

            But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.

            The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.

            And to save us.

82. I also knew that from this moment on I was going to experience heaven and hell, joy and pain, dreams and hopelessness; that I would no longer be capable of containing the winds that blew from the hidden corners of my soul. I knew that from this moment on love would be my guide—and that it had waited to lead me ever since childhood, when I had felt love for the first time. The truth is, I had never forgotten love, even when it had deemed me unworthy of fighting for it. But love had been difficult, and I had been reluctant to cross its frontiers.

83. In the furthest corner of my soul, my true self still existed, and I still believed in my dreams.

87. Some places are like that: they can suffer through wars, persecutions, and indifference, but they still remain sacred. Finally someone comes along, senses that something is missing, and rebuilds them.

88. Love never comes just a little at a time, I thought… The previous day, the world had made sense, even without love’s presence. But now we needed each other in order to see the true brilliance of things.

90. “I sat with masters of magic and meditation. And finally I discovered what I was looking for: that truth resides where there is faith.”

90. “God is the same, even though He has a thousand names; it is up to us to select a name for Him.”

92. “Little by little, I discovered that as I talked to myself, a wiser voice was saying things for me.”

93. “We are our own greatest surprise,” he said. “Faith as tiny as a grain of sand allows us to move mountains. That’s what I’ve learned. And now, my own words sometimes surprise me.

            “The apostles were fishermen, illiterate and ignorant. But they accepted the flame that fell from the heavens. They were not ashamed of their own ignorance; they had faith in the Holy Spirit. This gift is there for anyone who will accept it. One has only to believe, accept, and be willing to make mistakes… Accept the gift, and then the gift manifests itself.”

95. I closed my eyes and let the music flow through me, cleansing my soul of all fear and sin and reminding me that I am always better than I think and stronger than I believe.

97. Thy will be done, my Lord. Because you know the weakness in the heart of your children, and you assign each of them only the burden they can bear. May you understand my love—because it is the only thing I have that is really mine, the only thing that I will be able to take with me into the next life. Please allow it to be courageous and pure; please make it capable of surviving the snares of the world.

99. God, I am trying to recover my faith. Please don’t abandon me in the middle of this adventure, I prayed, pushing my fears aside.

102. “Then why did you seek me out? Why rekindle the flame in me? Why did you tell me about the exercise of the Other and force me to see how shallow my life is?” I sounded confused and tremulous. From one minute to the next, I could see him drawing closer to the seminary and further from me. “Why did you come back? Why wait until today to tell me this story, when you can see that I am beginning to love you?”

            He did not answer immediately. Then he said, “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

            “I won’t. I’m not worried anymore about seeming ridiculous. You’ve taught me that.”

104. “For the past two weeks, I haven’t been able to stand the sadness in my soul. I went to my superior and told him what was happening to me. I told him about my love for you… So my superior said, ‘There are many ways to serve our Lord. If you feel that’s your destiny, go in search of it. Only a man who is happy can create happiness in others.’

            “ ‘I don’t know if that’s my destiny,’ I told my superior. ‘Peace came into my heart when I entered this seminary.’

            “ ‘Well, then, go there and resolve any doubts you may have,’ he said. ‘Remain out there in the world, or come back to the seminary. But you have to be committed to the place you choose. A divided kingdom cannot defend itself from its adversaries. A divided person cannot face life in a dignified way.’”

106. I didn’t want to think about the house—that was a matter suspended between heaven and earth, awaiting the hand of destiny.

107. If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.

            Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.

110. “These are people who accept the fire of the Holy Spirit,” he said, “the fire that Jesus left but that is used by so few people to light their candles. These people are very close to the original truth of Christianity, when everyone was capable of performing miracles.”

114. What happened next was incomprehensible. Each of the many people present began to speak a language that was different from any I had ever heard. It was more sound than speech, with words that seemed to come straight from the soul, making no sense at all. I recalled our conversation in the church, when he had spoken about revelations, saying that all wisdom was the result of listening to one’s own soul.

115. I had tried to resist; now I knew how easily love could set fire to the heart. I had tried to stay unreceptive to all of this in the beginning; now I felt that since I had loved before, I would know how to handle it.

115. There on the bank of the river, looking across at the grotto, I felt both fear and jealousy. Fear because it was all new to me, and what is new has always scared me. Jealousy because, bit by bit, I could see that his love was greater than I’d thought and spread over places where I’d never set foot.

116. Try, I said to myself. All you have to do is open your mouth and have the courage to say things you don’t understand. Try!

117. Simply having the courage to say senseless things made me euphoric. I was free, with no need to seek or to give explanations for what I was doing. This freedom lifted me to the heavens—where a greater love, one that forgives everything and never allows you to feel abandoned, once again enveloped me.

117. I opened my eyes, gazed at the darkness of the heavens, and felt my tears blending with the raindrops. The earth was alive and the drops from above brought the miracles of heaven with them. We were all a part of that same miracle.

119. We prayed together, and again I felt a sense of freedom. For years, I had fought against my heart, because I was afraid of sadness, suffering, and abandonment. But now I knew that true love was above all that and that it would be better to die than to fail to love.

            I had thought that only others had the courage to love. But now I discovered that I too was capable of loving. Even if loving meant leaving, or solitude, or sorrow, love was worth every penny of its price.

122. But at that moment, words were useless. Love can only be found through the act of loving.

123. “I love you,” I heard him say.

            “I’m learning how to love you.”

            He lit a cigarette. “Do you think the right moment will come?” he asked.

            I knew what he meant. I got up and sat on the edge of his bed.

            The light from his cigarette illuminated our faces. He took my hand and we sat there for some time. I ran my fingers through his hair.

            “You shouldn’t have asked,” I said. “Love doesn’t ask many questions, because if we stop to think we become fearful. It’s an inexplicable fear; it’s difficult even to describe it. Maybe it’s the fear of being scorned, of not being accepted, or of breaking the spell. It’s ridiculous, but that’s the way it is. That’s why you don’t ask—you act. As you’ve said many times, you have to take risks.”
            “I know. I’ve never asked before.”

            “You already have my heart,” I told him. “Tomorrow you may go away, but we will always remember the miracle of these few days. I think that God, in Her infinite wisdom, conceals hell in the midst of paradise—so that we will always be alert, so that we won’t forget the pain as we experience the joy of compassion.”

124. I had surprised myself. But sometimes if you think you know something, you do wind up understanding it.

124. “But since this morning, I feel as if I’m rediscovering love. Don’t try to understand it, because only a woman would know what I mean. And it takes time.”

125. “Men always have their reasons,” said the Other. “But the fact is that they always wind up leaving.”

127. I will not talk to my own darkness anymore, I promised myself, closing the door on the Other. A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth.

            If I have to fall, may it be from a high place.

128. “And I found happiness again. Fate is strange: almost no one I know married the first love of their lives. Those who did are always telling me they missed something important, that they didn’t experience all that they might have.”

129. “I think that when we look for love courageously, it reveals itself, and we wind up attracting even more love. If one person really wants us, everyone does. But if we’re alone, we become even more alone. Life is strange.”

129. “Have you ever heard of the book called the I Ching?” I asked her.

            “No, I haven’t.”

            “It says that a city can be moved but not a well. It’s around the well that lovers find each other, satisfy their thirst, build their homes, and raise their children. But if one of them decides to leave, the well cannot go with them. Love remains there, abandoned—even though it is filled with the same pure water as before.”

131. Wait. This was the first lesson I had learned about love. The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways—and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don’t know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.

134. “I’m exhausted,” I said, breaking the silence. “Less than a week ago, I finally learned who I am and what I want in life. Now I feel like I’ve been caught in a storm that’s tossing me around, and I can’t seem to do anything about it.”

            “Resist your doubts,” the padre said. “It’s important.”

            His advice surprised me.

136. “A person who goes in search of God is wasting his time. He can walk a thousand roads and join many religions and sects—but he’ll never find God that way.

            “God is here, right now, at our side. We can see Him in this mist, in the ground we’re walking on, even in my shoes. His angels keep watch while we sleep and help us in our work. In order to find God, you have only to look around.

            “But meeting Him is not easy. The more God asks us to participate in His mysteries, the more disoriented we become, because He asks us constantly to follow our dreams and our hearts. And that’s difficult to do when we’re used to living in a different way.

            “Finally we discover, to our surprise, that God wants us to be happy… In order to have a spiritual life, you need not enter a seminary, or fast, or abstain, or take a vow of chastity. All you have to do is have faith and accept God. From then on, each of us becomes a part of His path. We become a vehicle for His miracles.”

142. “So you can read my heart, Padre. And you know I love him, with a love that is growing every minute. We discovered the world together, and together we remain in it. He has been present every day of my life—whether I wanted him there or not.”

142. But the way things looked now, I hadn’t forgotten that first love very well. It had taken only three days for all of it to come rushing back.

143. “Padre, I love him,” I repeated.

            “So do I. And love always causes stupidity. In my case, it requires that I try to keep him from his destiny.”

146. “We all perform miracles,” he said. “Jesus said, ‘If our faith is the size of a mustard seed, we will say to the mountain, “Move!” And it will move.’”

147. “The world itself has a soul, and at a certain moment, that soul acts on everyone and everything at the same time.”

148. “The sandals are a part of the story, for if one can dominate the body, one can dominate the spirit.”

150. “ ‘If I were to listen to everyone, I’d wind up thinking that I’m the crazy one,’ Teresa answered.”

152. “At moments of transformation, martyrs are born. Before a person can follow his dream, others have to make sacrifices. They have to confront ridicule, persecution, and attempts to discredit what they are trying to do…

            “Nowadays, warriors of the light confront something worse than the honorable death of the martyrs. They are consumed, bit by bit, by shame and humiliation.”

153. “…but one of the things the Virgin said clearly to the girl was ‘I do not promise you happiness in this world.’ Why did she warn Bernadette? Because she knew the pain that awaited Bernadette if she accepted her mission.”

154. “You want to change the world with him, open new paths, see the story of your love for each other become legend—a story passed down through the generations. You still think that love can conquer all.”

            “Well, can’t it?”

            “Yes, it can. But it conquers at the right time—after the celestial battles have ended.”

155. “What can I do to try to prevent the suffering of someone who wants to return to paradise before it is time to do so?”

            “Nothing, Padre. Absolutely nothing.”

161. “Yes. But why not be like the mountains?”

            “Maybe because the fate of mountains is terrible,” I answered. “They are destined to look out at the same scene forever.”

162. Perhaps this all seems silly—murmuring things, saying words that have no meaning, that don’t help us in our reasoning. But when we do this, the Holy Spirit is conversing with our souls, saying things the soul needs to hear.

            When I felt that I was sufficiently purified, I closed my eyes and prayed.

            Our Lady, give me back my faith. May I also serve as an instrument of your work. Give me the opportunity to learn through my love, because love has never kept anyone away from their dreams.

166. “Look at this table,” he said. “The Japanese call it shibumi, the true sophistication of simple things. Instead, people fill their bank accounts with money and travel to expensive places in order to feel they’re sophisticated… The closer we get to God through our faith, the simpler He becomes. And the simpler He becomes, the greater is His presence.

            “Christ learned about his mission while he was cutting wood and making chairs, beds, and cabinets. He came as a carpenter to show us that—no matter what we do—everything can lead us to the experience of God’s love.”

168. I witnessed, as if in a dream, his inner conflict. I could see that he was wondering whether I’d reject him again, that he was thinking about his fear of losing me, and about the hard words he had heard at other, similar times—because we all have such experiences, and they leave scars.

169. Break the glass, I thought to myself, because it’s a symbolic gesture. Try to understand that I have broken things within myself that were much more important than a glass, and I’m happy I did. Resolve your own internal battle, and break the glass.

171. The moment of that kiss contained every happy moment I had ever lived.

182. But the first climber knew what was great about it: the acceptance of the challenge of going forward. He knew that no single day is the same as any other and that each morning brings its own special miracle, its magic moment in which ancient universes are destroyed and new stars are created.

            The first one who climbed those mountains must have asked, looking down at the tiny houses with their smoking chimneys, “All of their days must seem the same. What’s so great about that?”

            Now all the mountains had been conquered and astronauts had walked in space. There were no more islands on earth—no matter how small—left to be discovered. But there were still great adventures of the spirit, and one of them was being offered to me now.

183. Fortunate are those who take the first steps. Someday people will realize that men and women are capable of speaking the language of the angels—that all of us are possessed of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and that we can perform miracles, cure, prophesy, and understand.

188. “Every person on earth has a gift,” he began. “In some, the gift manifests itself spontaneously; others have to work to discover what it is.”

190. “Most human beings still cannot trust love.”

191. “We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.”

193. God hides the fires of hell within paradise.

198. It’s easy to suffer because you love a person, or the world, or your son. That’s the kind of suffering that you accept as a part of life; it’s a noble, grand sort of suffering. It’s easy to suffer for a cause or a mission; this ennobles the heart of the person suffering.

            But how to explain suffering because of a man? It’s not explainable. With that kind of suffering, a person feels as if they’re in hell, because there is no nobility, no greatness—only misery.

204. “May He have mercy,” I said, repeating her gesture. “But our having gone into that church really had been a sign—that every story has a sad ending.”

204. “Take a deep breath,” she said. “Let this new morning enter your lungs and course through your veins. From what I can see, your loss yesterday was not an accident.”

            I didn’t answer.

            “You also didn’t really understand the story you told me, about the sign in the church,” she went on. “You saw only the sadness of the procession at the end. You forgot the happy moments you spent inside. You forgot the feeling that heaven had descended on you and how good it was to be experiencing all of that with your…”

            She stopped and smiled.

            “…childhood friend,” she said, winking. “Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead’ because he knew that there is no such thing as death. Life existed before we were born and will continue to exist after we leave this world.”

            My eyes filled with tears.

            “It’s the same with love,” she went on. “It existed before and will go on forever.”

            “You seem to know everything about my life,” I said.

            “All love stories have much in common. I went through the same thing at one point in my life. But that’s not what I remember. What I remember is that love returned in the form of another man, new hopes, and new dreams.”

            She held out a pen and paper to me.

            “Write down everything you’re feeling. Take it out of your soul, but it on the paper, and then throw it away.”

205. “Don’t forget!” she shouted as she walked away. “Love perseveres. It’s men who change.”

210. “Go and get your things,” he said. “Dreams mean work.”