Brooke Helgeson
Professor Jonathan Lund
PACS 001-08
6 December 2018
Personal Legend
Everyone has goals. Whether they are job goals, personal life goals, or athletic goals, everyone has aspirations in their life. Some goals can be short term; or they can be long term life goals, or a “personal legend.” To me, one’s “Personal Legend” is what they believe they are meant to accomplish in their life. Everyone has a fate, and most people spend a majority of their lives chasing their fate. However, for someone to be successful in discovering their destiny, or “Personal Legend,” they must believe in fate, be courageous, show tremendous trust in the journey, and show unconditional dedication to the discovery. He must believe in fate in order to believe in that he was born for the sole purpose of accomplish something in the first place. From there he must be courageous by being able to show strength in the face of terror, grief, or pain along his journey. He must also be trusting of the process; the journey to find one’s “Personal Legend” can be short, or it can be very, very long, so he must be able to show faith and patience throughout the journey in order to achieve it. Lastly, he must show complete dedication to discovering his life purpose, or else he may give up along the way. To be successful in finding one’s true purpose for being on earth, or their “Personal Legend,” he must show all of these characteristics for the entire duration of his venture.
To some, it is believed that everyone’s life is written in the very beginning. You can’t change much, if anything at all; one must simply live his life and follow his fate. If someone wishes to pursue their “Personal Legend,” they obviously believe in fate, since he is trying to achieve what he was put on the earth to do. Without the belief in destiny, you would just be trying to reach a goal, as opposed to your life purpose. This idea of destiny can also be referred to as “Maktub” (page 61). The concept of this term comes from the Islamic belief that Allah, the God of Islam, writes one's destiny and whatever that happens in our life occurs because it is meant to be. The true translated meaning of this idea is “‘it is written’” (page 61). This means that your fate is written from the very beginning of your life; all the world conspires to get you to exactly where you must be for something to happen. There are “no coincidences,” in your life, they are all planned out and meant to occur at that exact moment due to all of your actions leading up to that instant (page 73). When someone is in the pursuit of their Personal Legend, “the entire universe [makes] an effort to help him succeed” (page 94). Everything that happens in your life is supposed to happen, and the world will help you make sure that it does. As long as one believes in fate and destiny, or Maktub, he must then also believe in his “Personal Legend” and try his absolute best to follow its path.
Courage is always an ideal characteristic for someone to have in the everyday world, but even more so in people who are trying to chase their “Personal Legend.” One must be able to show strength in the face of terror, grief, or pain in order to achieve their life purpose. In fact, courage is thought to be, “the quality most essential to understanding the language of the World” (page 115). This is because, if someone is able to show strength in the hardest of situations, they will be strong enough to make it through the treacherous journey of fulfilling their “Personal Legend.” One must be able to show courageousness in order to achieve their life purpose. Also, one cannot be discouraged when looked to as a fantasist or even called “another dreamer” (page 28). One must show persistence in the face of uncertainty. You must prove people wrong, or better yet, prove yourself wrong and succeed in things even you didn’t think you could do. Holding your head high, despite the results of certain negative occurrences in your life, is also a very important type of courageousness needed by purpose-searchers. It is said that “when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.” This means that the act of self enhancement causes others around us to also improve upon themselves. The positiveness of venturing to better yourself has a very bright, positive energy that others pick up on. So, not only are you benefiting yourself by being courageous and standing strong despite the problems you are facing, but you are also inspiring and bettering others around you, possibly to search for their own “Personal Legend,” too.
You must trust the process and your own heart. Show faith and patience in the journey. Trust is a key attribute to discovering and achieving your “Personal Legend.” Everyone has had a “gut feeling” about something, but what really is this vibe? A gut feeling is either the universe trying to tell you something, or your heart trying to communicate to you as to what the right thing to do is. You should always “listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the soul of the world, and it will one day return there” (page 132). In other words, you should trust your heart, or your gut, over your mind, because your heart can understand certain things that your mind is unable to due to emotions. Whichever gut feeling you’re sensing, trusting what your gut is trying to tell you is the best bet at chasing your own “Personal Legend.” Believing in yourself is something that everyone has grown up being told by people around them. If you don’t trust in yourself, it won’t matter if other people do; you must have self-confidence to chase your dreams. Sometimes, “people are afraid to pursue their most important dreams because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them (page 134).” Humans tend to doubt themselves and their potential, or they doubt their own senses of honor and dignity. We only get to live one life, and it only comes with one chance at living for ourselves. We need to put trust in ourselves and in our aspirations. We need to believe that anything is possible and that we, alone, can make it happen. One needs to trust in themself to truly reach their “Personal Legend.”
I believe that there is a fair share of UOP students that are on the path of pursuing their own personal legends by attending the University of the Pacific. Since I was a young child, I have always wanted to go to college, get a degree, and then get a job with that degree. I strongly believe that other attendees of UOP have had the same goals growing up. While all 3,500+ undergraduate students currently call the same school “home,” with over 80 undergraduate majors, we all have different personal legends. Some people are on their way to be doctors, others dentists, scientists, musicians, lawyers, or teachers. Everyone has their life goal, and at UOP most of us are headed well on our way in its direction. However, I strongly feel that there are people here who are only in college because they feel pressured to continue their schooling. Whether from parents, or other important people in their lives, one may only be attending University of the Pacific to satisfy others as opposed to living to make themselves happy. Perhaps in the future this will result in someone finding success in a field and changing their life goals to discover their true “Personal Legend.” But there is also a chance that someone living to make other people in their life happy, such as the baker does in The Alchemist, may end up being unhappy themselves, and failing to follow their “Personal Legend.” In the end, you should live for yourself, not anybody else. After all, life tends to be “generous to those who pursue their Personal Legends” (page 170).
Works Cited
Coelho, Paulo. The Alchemist. HarperCollins Publishers., 1998.