Journal 9/15

WOn page 24, the king of Salem tells Santiago, "When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it." Do you believe that this is true? Why or why not?

Somewhat. I say somewhat because the rules of this book's world make no sense at all. The king is a magical dispenser of justice pertaining to one's personal legend. When he thinks someone deserves something and it's following their personal legend, he gives it to them- or so we've seen so far. Take, for example, the story about the emeralds. We're presented with a miner who has had no luck with finding emeralds, who is about to give up and pursue something else. He really wanted to be successful, and had worked for five years sacrificing everything to try to get these minerals. He's about to give up when, lo and behold, the king swoops in and rewards the man with a huge emerald that he turned himself into. Not only can the king do that, but he also comes in the form of good ideas and solutions. But what if what someone wants very badly conflicts with following their personal legends? Those two aren't the same, as Santiago really wanted to settle down with the merchant's daughter near the start of the book but this was ruled out as straying from the correct path. The king is basically contradicting himself in saying his little spiel about the universe, and at the same time the entire personal legend concept is proven to not be the only way to go. The universe did not conspire to get Santiago hitched to that girl, even though he wanted to. Oh, but Santiago losing all his money and having to work for an entire year to get it back when he could've just gone straight to Egypt with no hassle? Pshh, that's part of his personal legend and is totally valid (sarcasm). The book makes silly excuses like that and its rules aren't grounded at all- good things and bad things blur the line between following/straying from one's personal legend, which makes no sense and just bothers me. What the king said about the universe is only sometimes true, and can apparently be overridden by the personal legend's priorities.