I didn’t read The Alchemist for the first time on this journey —but this journey feels like it’s been answering the book ever since.
When I think back to the beginning, before Costa Rica, before saying yes to places I never planned to visit, before burnout had a name —I recognize the same restlessness Santiago felt. Not dissatisfaction exactly. More like a low, constant hum telling you there is something else, somewhere else, asking to be lived.
The Alchemist isn’t really about travel. It’s about listening.
Listening to the quiet pull that doesn’t make sense yet. Listening to the idea that the path only appears once you start walking. That what you’re looking for often sends you far away just so you’re ready to recognize it when you return.
What strikes me now —reading it through memory rather than pages— is how much of the story is about detours. About meeting people who shape you briefly. About omens you only understand in hindsight. About fear disguising itself as practicality.
That was my beginning too. I didn’t leave with a master plan. I left with fatigue, curiosity, and a willingness to follow momentum instead of resisting it. Costa Rica wasn’t a goal —it was a yes. Spain wasn’t a destination —it was a door. Asia wasn’t a checklist —it was an unfolding.
And like Santiago, I kept thinking the treasure was somewhere else.
On a different continent.
In a different version of myself.
At the end of the road.
What I’m realizing now is that the journey wasn’t about collecting places. It was about stripping away the noise that drowned out my own voice.
Burnout wasn’t a failure —it was a signal. Fear wasn’t a warning —it was a compass.
There’s a line in The Alchemist that has always stayed with me:
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
I used to read that as magic. Now I read it as attention. When you commit —really commit— to listening to yourself, you start noticing the invitations you used to ignore.
This journey didn’t give me answers.
It gave me alignment.
And like the book suggests, maybe the point was never to escape my life —but to return to it differently. With fewer expectations. With more honesty. With a clearer sense of what actually matters.
If The Alchemist reflects my story, it’s not because I followed a destiny perfectly. It’s because I finally stopped pretending I couldn’t hear the call.
And I answered it —one step at a time.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost