By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Author: Paulo Coelho

The story is about Pilar who is reconciled with her childhood sweetheart after 10 years. During that period he has travelled and rediscovered religion, and when they meet again he is spreading a message on the feminine face of God.

He invites her to travel with him to France, where he confesses to love her. Despite her earlier resolve, Pilar finds herself reciprocating his feelings, and rediscovers her faith. She also discovers that he has a gift of curing the sick with his hands and is determined to spend the rest of her life as his companion in spreading his gift and the message of the Goddess. He, on the other hand, thinks that Pilar would rather have a normal life with a normal job, and so gives up his gift. It is this that brings Pilar to sit and weep by the river Piedra.

This book is touted as a story about love and the miracle of love. I think it is more about communication, or the different expectations of love and the result of not properly communicating that expectation. Pilar is willing to change her life to fulfill her lover's dreams and help him realise his potential. He (we never know his name), on the other hand, is willing to give up his ambition so that Pilar can continue with her everyday life, as he thinks all she wants in life is to settle down. He does not understand why she is upset rather than feel flattered by his sacrifice.

But isn't Pilar behaving in a truly womanly way? What female doesn't want to be the woman behind the successful man? The ambition and potential is what she loves most about him - reminding me of Renee Zellweger's lines in Jerry Maguire: "I love him for the man he wants to be and the man he almost is."

There was another idea I found more interesting in the book, where a priest relates an experiment in which a group of monkeys are taught to wash their bananas before eating them. The scientist conducting the experiment found out that other groups of monkeys began to do the same thing without ever coming into contact with the first group. The priest describes this as the world having a soul - when a certain number of the species knows something, the whole species will know it too. Malcolm Gladwell would call this The Tipping Point.