The fallacy in 'The Alchemist'

‘The Alchemist’ - by Paulo Coelho is undoubtedly one of my favorite books but a quote in that book always bugged me.

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Note: A variant of this quote is also attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I can think of two possible ways to interpret this. One is literally and the other one, not so literally. Going by the literal interpretation, this quote would mean to simply envision your dream, just believe in it, see yourself in that position and slowly the elements and the forces in the universe will conspire and turn things in your favor. You’ll soon get what you wished for.
This interpretation sounds too good to be true. We hardly see such things happen. People don’t achieve anything or get anywhere in life just by lying in bed and dreaming about it. So I’m simply going to dismiss this interpretation with no extra thought.

The next interpretation would be that you envisage your dream and along with it, you also do something for it. Both go hand in hand. You work towards your goal, you put in the hours, push your limits and when you do everything that is needed to get there, the whole universe will conspire and help you in getting there. To give you a realistic perspective: If your dream is about topping the billboard charts one day and you’re doing every bit of what’s needed to get there. Then the things that the universe arranges for you could be the following: some of your short compositions become an over-night hit on the internet, you getting called to talk-shows, you winning a contest, some famous artist agrees to be a mentor and all such things.

So this seems fair huh?

I don’t think so. I don’t believe that the world around us will conspire and things will turn out to be good. I don’t believe that the world will set the stage for us and make things easier. I have seen it do the opposite, several times. Things will go wrong and we’ll fail and the world and its elements will only push us down further.

Things can turn in our favor sometimes and sometimes everything will go wrong. This applies to everyone. Vincent Van Gogh died penniless and without much appreciation for his work while now his paintings are priceless. Everyone loves his Starry Night but he’ll never know. So, did this happen because he didn’t put his mind and soul into his paintings?

Nope! Its just a matter of probabilities. Everything in nature is. Right from the teeny-tiny particles within atoms to DNA replications and mutations and evolution and everything. The things external to us or the things not in our control are mostly random. Now you can’t misquote me and say that we don’t need to do anything about climate change. No! That’s not random, that’s happening only because of the things we all did.

We are responsible for the things in our control and we can only hope about the things unseen.

” Do what you can, with what you have, where you are”.

Theodore Roosevelt,

So am I saying that everything is destined and we are all playing our own roles? No. Nothing of that sort. With the little bit of control we have over things, we are in short creating and living our own unique lives.

Now, to address the element of randomness in nature. If you are an atheist you can just take it for granted and not do anything about it. If you’re on the other side, you can attribute all such randomness to a divine entity - God.

Albert Einstein famously said “God does not play Dice”, and this is often misinterpreted. Here’s a small article that paints a much more accurate picture of what he wanted to convey. So, if you think things are going wrong and everything around you is only making it worse, then worry not. This too shall pass. This should be another of those downs in life. No matter how bad, it’s important to not lose hope and keep doing what you should be doing. Reading Job’s story (in the Bible) will give an idea about what all could go wrong and his conversations with God only reaffirm the fact that he is almighty and eventually everything will fit into his big plans for us and the world. Again, that does not mean that I can lie in bed and wait for his wish to be done. We have the power to decide what we need to do and the rest can only be attributed to this randomness. So, don’t hope or expect the world to be favorable for you and instead be ready to deal with things, as they come your way. This unavoidable randomness is what makes us all unique. This is also why everyone is not a billionaire or everyone is not famous. It’s not possible for everyone to be a billionaire or everyone to be famous, it just throws reason out of the window. It’s totally okay to be our own ordinary selves and love life and its adventures till the end.