First of all,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY beautifullovelystronggodlysmileyandabitblur MOMMY! ;P
And, also to Sihui's Mommy! Yep, our mummies share the same birthday. His dad and my dad's birthdays are only one day apart! Amazing isn't it?
Not forgetting our dear sister, Cindy! You are a lovely twenty-two. A beautiful number to have :)

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I am currently re-reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. The central story is about Santiago the shepherd boy, and the interesting people and incidents he encounters whilst on his journey to search for the treasure he has seen in his dream.
I enjoyed the whole story when I first read it, especially when everything came into full circle.

Here's something I would like to share with you all in Coelho's Introduction which I didn't seriously take note when I was reading it for the first time.

"... All I know is that, like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream.
Why?

There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible... There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it's still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream... We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn't work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: "Oh, well, I didn't really want it anyway.

I asked myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes.
The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times.

So why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are going to suffer more than other people?

Because, once we have overcome the defeats - and we always do - we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence... Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight.

Having disinterred (publicly showed) our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: "Each man kills the thing he loves." And it's true. The mere possibility of getting what we we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt... We forget about all the obstacles. we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal - when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest.

But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here."

- Paulo Coelho (Nov 2002)

Well-said. He really got me thinking about my own Personal Legend. Why am I here for?
Somehow, I know each and every one of us on Earth are interconnected, intertwined by our personal callings. If we fulfill our calling, we also indirectly fulfill those of the others too.

For example, I am called to be an social economist. If I fulfilled my calling, I would implement measures that would allow the poor to have access to higher education. In the end, I may be helping a poor boy fulfill his calling of being a professional musician.

And this professional musician may be travelling around the world, playing his soothing music, healing the emotional wounds of perhaps, a widow who happen to attend his concert. Thus, this widow receives strength to carry on with her life, and continues to bake delicious bread to feed the orphans.

If we were all to pursue our dreams, overcome the obstacles, and get to our given destiny, all things will definitely work for the good of the Lord.