Free Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections by Paulo Coelho Page A

ten minutes, I drive back home. I pick up the newspaper from my mailbox, but it contains nothing of importance, only the things that journalists have decided we should know, feel involved in, and have an opinion about.
    I go over to my computer to check my e-mails.
    Nothing new, just a few unimportant decisions to be made which take me no time at all to resolve.
    I try doing some archery, but the wind makes it impossible. I’ve written my latest biennial book, which, this time, is entitled The Zahir and which won’t be published for several weeks. I’ve written the columns I publish on the internet. I’ve updated my web page. I’ve had my stomach checked out and, fortunately, no abnormality was found (I had been very frightened about having a tube put down my throat, but it turned out to be nothing very terrible). I’ve been to the dentist. The plane tickets I’d been waiting for have finally arrived by express mail. I have things to do tomorrow and things which I finished yesterday, but today…
    Today I have absolutely nothing that requires my attention.
    I feel uneasy. Shouldn’t I be doing something? Well, if I wanted to invent work, that wouldn’t take much effort. We all have projects to develop, light bulbs to change, leaves to sweep, books to put away, computer files to organize. But how about just facing up to the void?
    I put on a hat, thermal clothes, and a waterproof jacket and go out into the garden. That way, I should be able to withstand the cold for the next four or five hours. I sit down on the wet grass and start making a mental list of what is going through my head:
    (a) I’m useless. Everyone else at that moment is busy, working hard.
    Answer: I work hard too, sometimes twelve hours a day. Today I just happen to have nothing to do.
    (b) I have no friends. Here I am, one of the most famous writers in the world, and I’m all alone; even the phone doesn’t ring.
    Answer: Of course I have friends, but they respect my need for solitude when I’m at the old mill in St Martin in France.
    (c) I need to go and buy some glue.
    Yes, I’ve just remembered that yesterday I ran out of glue. Why not jump in the car and go to the nearest town? And I stop at that thought. Why is it so difficult to stay as I am now, doing nothing?
    A series of thoughts cross my mind: friends who worry about things that haven’t yet happened; acquaintances who manage to fill every minute of their lives with tasksthat seem to me absurd; senseless conversations; long telephone calls in which nothing of any importance is ever said; bosses who invent work in order to justify their jobs; officials who feel afraid because they have been given nothing important to do that day, which might mean that they are no longer useful; mothers who torment themselves because their children have gone out for the evening; students who torment themselves over their studies, over tests and exams.
    I have a long, hard struggle with myself not to get up and go to the stationery shop to buy that glue. I experience terrible feelings of anxiety, but I am determined to stay here doing nothing, at least for a few hours. Gradually, the anxiety gives way to contemplation, and I start to listen to my soul. It has been longing to speak to me, but I’m always too busy.
    The wind is still blowing very hard, and I know that it’s cold and rainy, and that tomorrow I might perhaps need to buy some glue. I’m not doing anything, and yet I’m also doing the most important thing a man can do: I’m listening to what I needed to hear from myself.

A Man L ying on the Ground
    O n 1 July 1997, at five past one in the afternoon, there was a man of about fifty lying on the sea front in Copacabana. I glanced down at him as I walked by; then I continued on to the stall where I usually go for a drink of coconut water.
    As a resident of Rio de Janeiro, I must have passed by such men, women, or children hundreds or even thousands of times. As someone who has travelled