By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho

This is a story about Pilar and her childhood friend (love) who left the place they grew up in to pursue his dreams. One day they met again and he asked her to join him on a journey. She didn't know it then, when she agreed to join him, that it would also be a journey through the memories of their past that would beg her to reevaluate her thoughts on faith and religion and her feelings for him.

This is one of those books (and there are lots of them) that I probably won't read on my own. A friend sent me an email last August asking me to read this book adding that on page 178 she almost cried. She's the same friend (now working in Dubai) who convinced me to watch the Korean dramedy "Goong". I don't know whether we read the same edition of the novel, but on page 178 of the edition I read there's a passage that I read a couple of times before continuing on.

"I am going to sit here with you by the river. If you go home to sleep, I will sleep in front of your house. And if you go away, I will follow you—until you tell me to go away. Then I'll leave. But I have to love you for the rest of my life."

I have to love you for the rest of my life... I think I stared at this sentence for who knows how many minutes before continuing with the next. To love somebody for the rest of your life even after he or she told you to leave. It's sad and probably won't stand the test of time. And if you do it even after knowing somebody else owns her heart, there's that question of being able to love someone else. Wouldn't you want to love somebody else? Wouldn't you want the possibility of loving someone else? But to ask these questions would be missing the point, according to the book. To ask those questions would be to worry about whether she'll say yes or no. It's as if you can't love unless she loves you back. If I read the book correctly, it's telling me not to worry about how it will end. If it's a sad ending, remember the happy moments before that. God's will be done.