I picked up a copy of The Alchemist in a bookshop here in Kathmandu today. It wasn’t my first encounter with Paulo Coelho’s story of a shepherd in search of his destiny. Years ago, when I was living in Orlando, a friend had gifted me the book, telling me it was her favorite. Out of gratitude, I started reading it — but it didn’t land. The words felt distant, the lessons vague, the journey unrelatable. I put it down.
Fast forward four or five years. I was sleeping on a friend’s couch in Massachusetts, the ground shifting beneath me as I prepared to leave for a new life in Tokyo. Something compelled me to pick up the book again. This time, it was like reading another text entirely. The parable that had once seemed flat became profound, each page echoing with truths I hadn’t been ready to hear before. That second reading was life-changing.
And now, in Kathmandu, with two weeks left before I return to Japan after so many years, I found myself carried — almost otherworldly — into a bookstore. My hands landed on The Alchemist again. It wasn’t nostalgia. It wasn’t chance. It felt necessary.
That’s the thing about books: they resonate when we need them to. They wait quietly on shelves until the moment our lives align with their message. Sometimes we’re not ready, sometimes we’re not listening, but when the timing clicks, the words feel as though they were written solely for us.
For me, The Alchemist has become less about Santiago’s treasure and more about the reminder that stories meet us where we are. Orlando. Massachusetts. Tokyo. Kathmandu. Different chapters of my life, the same book, yet never the same reading.
Maybe that’s why I had to buy it again here. Because the story — like my own — is still unfolding.
September 2025