True words were spoken by Paulo Coelho

An old man and a boy are sitting on a bench. The boy is reading a book that the old man wants to see. The boy is fluttering between feelings of annoyance and hesitation. He is afraid the man is either going to bother him or be illiterate and embarrassed. The boy is not prepared for either situation. He reluctantly shows the man the book and is quite surprised at the old man's response.

"Hmm.." said the old man, looking at all sides of the book, as if it were some strange object. "This is an important book, but it's really irritating."

The boy was shocked. The old man knew how to read, and had already read the book. And if the book was irritating, as the old man had said, the boy still had time to change it for another.

"It's a book that says the same thing almost all other books in the world say," continued the old man. "It describes people's inability to choose their own destinies. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world's greatest lie."

"What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.

"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

Circles

I have been using the phrase "my life moves in circles" lately. When I say that I mean there are links linking to other links in my everyday life. Usually these circles are coincidences; I talk about something one day with someone and then in a very short time after that, that seemingly random conversation topic will resurface before my eyes in a very tangible way. Does this happen to everyone? Here is an example. My cooworker Schyler and I uphold a continuous dialogue about our existing creative projects. I am currently feeling underinspired and have nothing to share. He currently has an idea that he wants to go to a junkyard and gather up lots of broken umbrellas and construct huge wings out of them. He thinks it would be wise for me to go to the dump to find things to play with. We don't have a truck though, so I wrote off our conversation as a garbage sifting pipe dream. And then this morning on my way to work, I walk one block up the street to the main drag, and there in the middle of the intersection, needing desperatly to be moved, is a decrepit umbrella. Is it blue and missing a handle and perfect for gigantosaur wing construction. How does this happen? I don't know. Did Schyler think of this idea because it had been raining for two days and the chances of me stumbling upon a dead umbrella were therefore greater? What would happen if I did not have the umbrella conversation? Would the umbrella still have been in the street for me to notice? Would it have been there but without meaning? I don't know. The circle is endless.