"Everyone, when they're young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend."
--Melchizedek the King of Salem, from The Alchemist
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| She would gaze up at the hills |
There once was a little girl who lived in a walled town in the middle of a small valley. The valley was surrounded on all sides by high green hills, whose
rounded tops were dotted with red wild flowers in summer and covered with
smooth, unbroken snow in winter.
Every morning as the little girl walked to
school, she would gaze up at these hills and wish that she could climb up and
explore them. She
was sure that she could see wonderful things from their tops.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to climb up those hills?” said the little girl one
day to her friend. They were playing in the schoolyard.
“Oh, you can’t go up there,” said the friend.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Teacher said,” he replied, shrugging. He did not care about the hills
and did not question why children weren’t allowed to play on them. He ran off
to join a ball game and left the little girl staring wistfully up at the grassy slopes.
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| the walled town |
Later that day, she asked her father about the hills.
“Will you take me up to the hills around the town,
Daddy?” she said. “I want to go see them but the children at school say
we aren’t allowed to go up there.”
Her father looked at his daughter with compassion. “Yes, I used to want to climb those hills when I was a boy, but they
are dangerous and wild. That is why no one from the town ever goes up there,
and you are not allowed to go either. I tell you this for your own good, my
dear. Forget about those hills.” Her father smiled and hugged her.
She was a good daughter and loved her father very much, and loved her
teacher, and did not wish to get into trouble. So she did as they said.
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| the little girl grew into a woman |
The years passed and the little girl grew into a woman. She noticed the
hills around her less and less because she had been told to ignore them. But
she was unhappy. She became withdrawn and sometimes she would sit at her window
and cry although she didn’t know why.
She was going to be married to an important industrialist in the town
who was very rich and had a beautiful house. She loved him because he was everything
that her parents and the town admired—capable, practical, successful. But the
thought of marrying him made her tired and restless. As the day of the wedding
approached, she began to feel desperate.
“I cannot marry him,” she said to herself one day as she was sitting by
her window and crying. “But I’ve given my word and everyone expects it. And he
is a good man. What else can I do? What else is there? Oh I am so unhappy! Is
anyone in the world as unhappy as I am?”
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| He was everything the town approved of |
The green hills that surrounded the town seemed to remind her of
something she used to want, but she couldn’t remember what that had been.
Her family noticed that she seemed ill and became worried about her. They
called for the doctor to come examine her, and he arrived at the house with his
black doctor’s bag that afternoon.
“Everything seems all right,” said the doctor after the exam. “But she is
suffering from low spirits.”
“And what can we do?” asked her mother anxiously.
“Make her go into town and see the parade today,” recommended the
doctor. “Take her to the park. Make her go shopping and buy pretty clothes. See
if that will revive some interest in her for life. Girls always perk up when they
buy a new dress.” He laughed.
So her family did all of these things, and the girl permitted herself to
be taken around to all of these places, even though it hurt her to do it, because
she didn’t want to disappoint her parents, and because she hoped it would make
her feel better. But when they got home, she felt worse. She went into her room
and shut her door and sobbed on her bed.
“What am I going to do?” she thought in anguish. “They are killing
me—they are killing me! Oh what am I going to do?”
She felt ashamed of thinking of her family that way because she knew
they were kind, good people who were only trying to help her. She felt like she
was betraying them by thinking these thoughts, and this made her feel worse.
She decided that she would try to be happy and make the best of her situation.
“After all, what else is there to do?” she thought wearily.
That evening, she put on an elegant gown and arranged her hair in the
mirror. She was beautiful and looked lovely. She smiled in the mirror at herself and looked like the perfect society
belle. She went down to dinner and sat by her fiancé and talked charmingly, and
everyone was relieved to see that she was better that evening.
“The outing worked,” said her aunt to her mother. “See, I knew she only
needed a change of scenery to right her.”
That night the girl sat by her window and stared at the green hills that
ringed the city and cried her heart out.
“What will I do, what will I do? I can’t do this forever,” she thought
desperately. “Oh, I wish I were dead!” And then she cried harder, because
wishing you were dead was too horrible to admit even to yourself.
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| That night, the girl cried her heart out |
Later she grew calm. “I am a bad person,” she thought as she lay in her
bed and watched the moon rise. “That is why I’m so unhappy. Everyone else is so
happy. There must be something wrong with me.”
She suddenly noticed the green hills outside of her window. They looked
grey in the moonlight.
“I remember,” she thought, “how I used to want to explore those hills.
How silly I was to want that!” She started crying then, and thought, “There
isn’t anything to them, probably. They are wild and dangerous, I’m sure. And
there isn’t anything up there to see, probably, just a lot of grass and ordinary
trees. I can see trees down here.”
And then she thought, “But I wish I had seen them . . . just once . . . when
I was a child! I would have loved to explore them. But I am a woman and going
to be married. I must do the right thing and be a good daughter and a loyal
fiancé. That is the most important thing.” But in spite of herself, she looked
again at the hills, and tears gathered in her eyes. She pushed them away and said
to herself angrily, “Oh, forget those hills, they are nothing! Nothing!” She fell asleep then,
exhausted.
Two weeks later, she put her disturbing thoughts away from her and
married the town industrialist. It was a beautiful wedding and everyone in the
town celebrated and her parents were pleased with the thought that she was
happy and settled at last. And the girl felt happy because she had conquered
herself finally and had done the right thing.
Years passed. Her husband the town industrialist became more successful,
and he was busier and busier with his business, and had no time to talk to her
about the things in her heart. Whenever she tried, he became impatient and
looked at his watch and interrupted.
“That’s nice, darling,” he would say, “but I am late to a meeting. You
understand, don’t you? I will see you tonight. Please remember to have my
slippers waiting for me by the fire when I come home this time. You are too
forgetful.” He would pinch her nose and kiss her cheek and walk out the front
door, whistling cheerfully.
More years went by and she had children. They were all like their father
and she sealed up the things in her heart against them as well, for she was
afraid they wouldn’t understand.
One day she saw her littlest boy looking up at the high green hills
around the city. He was a chubby little thing of about six and had been her
favorite since he was old enough to talk. She felt there was something
different about him, that he was more like her than his father. As he looked at
the hills, she saw bewilderment, fear and longing cross his face.
“Mommy, Daddy says we musn’t climb those hills. Why musn’t we?”
“Because they are dangerous. They are wild and dangerous,” she said, and
felt angry. “Don’t ask me about them again! Why would you want to go up there?
Why would anyone ever want to go up there? What notions you have!”
Her child’s eyes grew wide—his mother had never been angry with him
before. He never asked her about the hills again and soon forgot all about
them. His father’s blood in him was stronger after all.
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| The years went by and she rarely went anywhere |
She withdrew more and more into her own room as the years went on. She
rarely went anywhere because none of the places she could go interested her. Her
family grew up and left to make their way in the town. They were happy and
married and had families of their own, and all of her sons worked in their
father’s business. She watched their happiness and wondered at it, and wondered
why she had never been happy herself.
“I do all the things that they do,” she thought, “and I have been all
the things that they have been, and I have thought all the things that they
think—and they are content, and I am unhappy. Always, always unhappy! What makes the difference? Oh, I am such a horrible
person. So ungrateful to my own blessings! How many people would give
everything they have to live my life!”
When she was a very old lady, her husband died. Her left her well
provided for, and she continued to live in the big house in the center of town.
She cried for him and put on mourning. By this time, she could not imagine life
without him. She stayed in her room and had the curtains drawn, because she was
afraid of the sky and the giant moon at night and the bustle of the city.
To amuse herself, she had her servants bring her art supplies, and she
would sit up in her chair during the day and make papier-mâché models of a city
in a valley with high, green hills surrounding it. After a while, she left out
the city and only made hills. She made the hills bigger and bigger each time.
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| She drew pictures of high green hills |
Soon she grew too weak to make papier-mâché models, so she began to draw
pictures in crayon instead. Her hands by now were shaky and gnarled by
arthritis, and she was only able to draw crude outlines of things, and so her
pictures looked like they had been drawn by a small child. She drew pictures of
high green hills. She drew a small girl standing on the top of one of the hills.
She drew the little girl in a purple dress and made the grass around her dotted
with red wild flowers. She made the servants hang each picture on her bedroom
wall. Soon the walls were covered in pictures, and still she made more, until
her floor and ceiling were covered with them as well.
“The old lady has gone crazy,” the servants whispered to each other.
On a day in the summer, the old lady died. There was a respectable
funeral and her children buried her next to their father by the family monument
in the church cemetery. A week later, two of her children came to the old mansion to get it ready to be sold, and discovered her room just as she had left it--completely full of pictures.
“Oh poor Mama,” the daughter said, wiping her eyes. “She was a good woman and a good mother to us, but I don't think she was ever really happy.”
“Don’t pity her,” said the son, scowling at the artwork on the walls. “She was my mother and I know we musn’t
speak ill of the dead, but she made herself miserable. You know she did.”
“You're right, of course. Oh well," said the daughter, slipping her handkerchief back into her pocket, "I guess some people just don’t know when they have it good. Poor mother--she’s a lesson to us all!”
