Wisdom Strawberry #8: The world’s greatest lie
A conversation, that takes place between Santiago and the King of Salem (from The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho):
“It’s a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man. “It describes people’s inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.
“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
The truth is that 99% of the things that happen to us, are either a direct or an indirect consequence of the choices we make.
Fate
Fate does exists. A small amount of the things in your life are completely beyond our control. You cannot choose your parents. You cannot choose the color of your eyes.
But most of the time, claiming fate is nothing more than a comfortable way to absolve yourself from blame and refuse to accept responsibility for your actions.
Truth and Consequence
You can choose to:
- Take care of your health.
- Fill your mind with pure and good things.
- Be a good steward of your money.
- Draw your influence from good people.
- Make a positive difference in the lives of the people around you.
- Live a life that brings glory to God.
99% of the things that happen to you, are because you choose to let them happen.
Don’t be misled; remember that you can’t ignore God and get away with it: a man will always reap just the kind of crop he sows! If he sows to please his own wrong desires, he will be planting seeds of evil and he will surely reap a harvest of spiritual decay and death; but if he plants the good things of the Spirit, he will reap the everlasting life which the Holy Spirit gives him.
This strawberry is part of the Wisdom Strawberries series. If you want to receive a notice every time a new strawberry ripens, you can subscribe to Liberta.
December 17th, 2008 at 01:06 pm
This is one of my favorite passages of that book and it’s a philosophy that we’re using as the basis of our business.
So much of helplessness is learned helplessness.