books – Wordsbykenaniah

A reminder to chase your dreams

May 5, 2025 words by ken

A reminder to chase your dreams

Introduction

The title of this post is an age-old saying — perhaps the most widely used piece of advice in the world’s history. How does this advice stand the test of time? One reason is that people rarely follow it or even try to follow it. Due to life’s overwhelming nature, we often forget the biggest necessity that life demands — the pursuit of one’s dreams.

In this post, I would like to discuss Santiago, the protagonist of Paulo Coelho’s international bestseller, The Alchemist. This story is about a young boy who chases a recurring dream with all his heart and soul and, in the end, has a surprising revelation about his dream.

Short Summary

Santiago is a young shepherd from the Spanish province of Andalusia. Growing up with the ambition of travelling the world, Santiago pursued being a shepherd to move around tending his sheep.

Troubled by an unfinished dream about a hidden treasure near the Egyptian pyramids, he wanted to sell his sheep and travel the world to explore the meaning of his dream. In the early days of his dream, he seeks the help of a Gypsy woman for the interpretation, but he doesn’t get the answer he was looking for.

But soon, he unexpectedly meets a wise old man, who happens to be Melchizedek, the king of Salem. Following the king’s advice, the little boy journeys toward the Egyptian pyramids.

This journey to Egypt was no easy one. It would turn his life upside down and push him to his limits. He gets off to a disastrous start when he gets robbed by a fellow in Tangier and is left with no money to continue. To make ends meet and save money to continue on his journey, he starts a job as a salesman in a crystal shop.

After saving enough money, he boards a caravan to travel through the deserts of Egypt, where he is accompanied by an Englishman in search of an alchemist. At a certain point in their journey, they stop and cool off in an oasis. Hoping that the alchemist would reside here, the Englishmen and the boy go in search of him.

In this pursuit, Santiago meets a beautiful girl named Fatima and falls in love instantly. He conveys his love for her and proposes marriage. They develop a great relationship in the oasis, and their life as a couple blossoms into a meaningful one until Santiago has to resume his journey to the pyramids.

Amidst the never-ending journey of the wilderness, the boy had learned to read omens and to listen to his heart more clearly. In one such instance, his ability to read an omen saves the oasis from an enemy attack. It was during this time that he met with the alchemist.

They converse about the boy’s journey from the pastures of Andalusia to Egypt, and the Alchemist decides to come along with him on his journey. The lion’s share of their conversation was about listening to your heart and staying true to its path.

Three hours away from the pyramids, the Alchemist bids goodbye to the boy and sends him on his way with some gold for him to use. This was the first time that Santiago had witnessed the power of alchemy, as he stood next to the alchemist turning lead into gold.

Though the boy parted ways with him, the alchemist’s words were now etched in his heart forever. As he journeyed closer and closer to the treasure, his words kept echoing inside of him.

When he finally arrived at the location of the treasure, the boy started digging into the dunes. A big twist in the tale awaits. He is caught off guard by the sound of a few footsteps approaching. They were refugees from the tribal wars, and they started enquiring about the boy’s actions.

The boy reveals his mysterious secret, and is met with a spine-chilling response. One of the men looks at him and says that he once had a recurrent dream too, from the same location they were at. He dreamed that he should travel to the fields of Spain and look for a ruined church where shepherds and their sheep slept. He thought that he might find a treasure there under the roots of a sycamore tree. He said he was too stupid to cross a desert because of a dream.

The sycamore tree in that ruined church was the exact place where the boy had had the dream. Soon, he travels back to Spain to visit that church and starts digging for his treasure. He finds a chest of Spanish gold coins and precious stones, and statues embedded with jewels. They were the forgotten spoils of a past conquest.

Even after realising the biggest dream of his life, his heart still yearned for a greater treasure, as the wind brought the scent of Fatima’s perfume.

Lessons from the book

Be ten toes down with your dream. Chase it with all you’ve got

If there’s one thing to take away from this book, it would be this. A lowly shepherd from Spain threw everything away and decided to take on the most gruesome journey of his life with little to no prior knowledge of it, all for the sake of his dream.

I loved how the boy faced adversaries on his journey. There were certain points in his journey, when he was up against mighty men whom he assumed were to attack him, he had a strange sense of joy, knowing that he could die in pursuit of his destiny. He considered such death to be a privilege. What a strange yet powerful view on destiny!

2. When a person desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realise their dream.

This phrase is repeated many times in the book. What I understand is that the world favours the man who tries the most. I think of it as simple math: The more you try, the more likely you are to succeed.

Santiago’s desire to fulfil his destiny was no joke. He sold all his sheep to gather the money, got robbed twice on his journey, had his journey halted in a strange land and had to hustle to regain his path, got into the middle of the desert during the time of war, left the love of his life back to continue his journey, and met with the biggest surprise at the end of it all.

The fascinating part of all this is that he kept going. None of the hardships could put a full stop to his journey. The difference between the man who has the universe on his side and the man who doesn’t is the difference between Santiago and the refugee. Both had the same dream, but only one was ready to achieve it.

It’s probably the most influential book I’ve ever read. It empowered my dreamer spirit and validated my suffering. If Santiago could suffer, survive and claim his treasure, then so could I. – Will Smith on his memoir

As the title of this post says, this book stands as a reminder to chase our dreams. Paulo Coelho has beautifully articulated the journey of chasing your dream with a sense of delusion, which he compares with the art of alchemy — the magical ability to change lead to gold, leading us to believe that life in itself is a type of alchemy, meaning you can be anything you put your mind to be, and fulfil any dream. This book has planted a great amount of self-belief in me, and I hope it will do the same to you.

Hope you liked reading this post. If you are already a fan of this book, do let me know in the comments how this book helped you. Also, you can share your thoughts on your journey chasing your dreams.

Thank you!

My Thoughts on ‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka

April 16, 2025 words by ken

Introduction

I had encountered the term ‘Kafkaesque’ a few times on the internet. Curious to find out what it was about, I did some research on the works of Franz Kafka and decided to buy his famous novel, ‘Metamorphosis’. Being a non-fiction enthusiast, I’m always a bit sceptical before picking up a fiction book, though I don’t even read them that often, and this time it wasn’t any different. The internet describes the term ‘Kafkaesque’ as extremely unpleasant, frightening, and confusing. Would this style of writing suit someone who isn’t used to the world of fiction? I guess that’s where the creative prowess of an author lies. In this post, I would like to talk about my experience reading this novel and understand the perspective of other readers, too.

Short Summary

The story revolves around the life of Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman whose life is turned upside down when he is diagnosed with a disorder that turns him into an insect-like creature. This change causes him a lot of physical and mental distress and leaves his whole family in turmoil.

On the day of his disastrous change, he was scheduled to travel for a sales pitch but had dozed off for a long time. Knowing his absence at the workplace, his chief clerk pays a visit to his house and all his problems begin to unravel.

Not willing to reveal his misery yet, Gregor refuses to leave his room for a long time, but after continuous requests from his family and a long rant from his chief, he decides to unlock the door. This moment turns out to be the turning point in Gregor’s new life, as he has his entire family shaken.

Gregor is now focused on convincing his chief that there is nothing abnormal about him and that he can still finish his duty, but is soon chased off and locked into his room by his father. From this point on, Gregor’s life is bound between the walls of his room and hidden in the darkness underneath the furniture.

Far from his normal life, Gregor can no longer be independent, and no longer have freedom or happiness. His parents were now older, and his condition made it all the more difficult for them to comprehend, and it was always his sister who would help him with some of his day-to-day activities.

With every passing day, Gregor’s situation seemed to get worse. His family members could no longer depend on him financially and now had to go to work themselves, and soon his sister’s tight schedule made Gregor feel neglected and alone.

The family took in three lodgers to generate some additional income. One day, as his sister Grete is playing the violin for the lodgers, Gregor shows up in front of them to admire Grete’s performance. The lodgers were shocked by his appearance and decided to leave the house instantly.

Fuming angrily, Grete lashes out at Gregor, and the situation turns ugly. He creeps back to his room in sadness. Sadly, the next morning, the chairwoman of the house finds Gregor lying dead in his room and informs the family. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any grief, just a sigh of relief. After Gregor’s death, the family moves to a new apartment, and they start looking for a husband for Grete.

My Thoughts

I feel that this book is a metaphorical representation of alienation and isolation that occur due to the overwhelming burdens of life, something that is often overlooked, especially with today’s all-hustle, no-rest work culture.

Although Gregor’s metamorphosis seems practically impossible, some of his day-to-day struggles felt relatable. That’s where a lot of credit is due for the writer. Making the audience feel emotions through a humanly impossible story and holding their curiosity to a point where they can’t wait to find out how the character deals with his life is no easy task.

Gregor Samsa’s life is a roller coaster. On one hand, the life-changing disease couldn’t stop him from the worries of financial burdens and family responsibility, on the other, there are times when he doesn’t want to leave his room for a second, hiding behind the darkness had become his routine.

Although it might feel like the metamorphosis is the reason for his alienation, it’s just a revelation to himself on how his life had been. Round-the-clock work schedules had taken hold of his life and had kept him isolated from real human connections, but the disease had put his misery under a microscope.

I can only imagine how often I’ve committed myself to a task, but the leftovers from my day job kept hanging on to a piece of my mind. I can truly relate to being stuck in my routines and always being too busy to indulge in meaningful conversations with the ones around, and also being in a state sometimes where I hated to leave my room, only because I had been accustomed to the isolation.

I can imagine all the times I’ve been sick or on a weekend trip and still have a to-do list lingering in my mind. I feel Franz Kafka might have gone through something similar. I wonder how much he related to Gregor himself.

Interesting perspectives. All arising from a man who turned into vermin!

Overall, I enjoyed reading this work of Kafka, and I’m highly intrigued to explore some of his other works. If you’ve never read this book before, I would recommend you to give it a shot.

Having said all this, I want to interact with some of my readers through this post. I want to know your perspectives on this book and what it meant to you. Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Thank you for reading.

Want to be wealthy? Then this post is for you

January 14, 2025 words by ken

Jermaine Cole, one of my favourite rappers ever, said this line in a song that I heard recently –

One thing about this money –

it’s easy to get

but trust me, my brother, it’s hard to keep

This line hit me hard when I heard it the first time, and it quickly reminded me of the book I’m about to write about today — ‘The Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel.

It’s easily one of the most hyped books I’ve ever heard of, almost making me wonder if the hype would lessen the beauty of this book when I decide to read it, but trust me folks, it lived up to every bit of it.

People usually pay a lot of attention to fallacies when it comes to money. If I come out tomorrow and say I have found a way to double your money in a week easily, many people will have their ears glued to me.

But if I talk about ways to understand how money really works and how it grows steadily, they won’t even pay attention. People love quick relief but hate the long-term solution.

What I love about this book is the way the author breaks this barrier and explains the psychological aspect of money in the simplest way possible. Though it’s not a get-rich-quick kind of book, it will have you hooked in no time.

Now that I’ve talked about the book enough, and hopefully motivated you to pick it up instantly, let’s dive into some of my favourite lessons from it.

1) Keep your expectations steady when you grow your money

One of the most hard-hitting pointers from this book is this — The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.

If our goalpost(our expectations and needs) keeps moving ahead with money, then no amount of money can give us satisfaction because we will always end up wanting more. I was able to connect with this logic because I’ve faced the same in my life. When I started earning, I had the habit of writing down all my expenses on a sheet of paper and planning on how to spend money wisely.

At first, I used to think, if I could earn a few thousand more, my life could be a lot better now. And then when I started earning more, it was the same feeling again, because my expense list started getting longer as I started earning more money. That’s when I realized that the problem was with me and my spending habits. Soon I was able to change it and control my expenses.

The first takeaway that you need from this book is this — stop the goalpost from moving. Morgan Housel said it best :

Happiness, as it’s said, is just results minus expectations.

2) Compounding is the secret Recipe

Compounding is probably the most cliched term in the world of financial literacy. But it is so for a reason. It is the secret sauce that you need to perfect your wealth creation journey.

The author points out a great example, the story of Warren Buffet. Warren started investing at the age of 10 and continued his journey over 7 decades. The key here is the amount of time that he stayed in the game and not the percentage of returns generated(although he was able to grow his money at a whopping 22% annually).

To put that into perspective, had he stopped investing at at age of sixty, having earned the same 22% returns, his net worth would have been just $11.9 million as compared to his net worth at the time of this book which is $84.5 Billion!

$81.5 billion of Warren Buffet’s $84.5 billion networth(at the time of writing this book) came after his 65th birthday. These staggering numbers are only because of the power of compounding.

Good investing isn’t necessarily about earning the highest returns. It’s about earning pretty good returns that you can stick with and which can be repeated for the longest period of time. That’s when compounding runs wild.

3) Getting wealthy vs Staying wealthy

Let’s go back to the opening block of this post where I shared a song lyric that told us that making money is one thing, but keeping it is the hard part.

Think about how many real-life examples come to your mind. I’ve seen many of these cases happen with athletes mostly, and every time I hear such news I’m surprised at how they manage to go broke after earning all that money.

If you didn’t already know, Mike Tyson is a famous example.

So how do these rich people end up broke? How can we avoid it?

The author tells us that if he would summarize money success in a single word it would be “survival”.

“Survival” means the ability to stick around for a long time, without being forced to give up. Because in the game of money, the ones who stay in the game long enough are the ones who reap the benefits.

Let’s take Warren Buffet as an example again. Look at what he had to go through in his investing journey.

He didn’t panic and sell during the 14 recessions. He didn’t sully his business reputation. He didn’t attach himself to one business strategy or passing trend. He didn’t burn himself out. He survived for 7 decades! And that incredible combo of longevity + compounding is what made him wealthy.

Survival means appreciating 3 things:

More than big returns, I want to be financially unbreakable → Merely good returns sustained uninterrupted for the longest period — especially in times of chaos will always win.
Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan -> A good plan emphasizes room for error. If there is enough room for error in your savings, you will be happy no matter how the market condition is.
Be optimistic about the future, but paranoid about what will prevent you from getting to the future -> Sensible optimism is better than just optimism. Sensible optimism is believing that all things will work out fine in the end, but the path to it will be filled with landmines. It’s important to accept these situations and still be optimistic.

4) Wealth is what you don’t see

It’s important to understand the difference between ‘Rich’ and ‘Wealthy’. ‘Rich’ is the current income, and ‘wealth’ is the financial assets that haven’t yet been converted into stuff you see.

Ironically, spending money to look rich is the fastest way to become poor. When people try to look rich, they often end up spending the money that they don’t have as the money they do have is not enough.

Wealth is an option not yet taken to buy something later. Its value lies in offering options, flexibility,and growth to one day purchase more stuff than you could get right now.

5) Reasonable > Rational

Do not aim to be coldly rational when making financial decisions. Aim to be just pretty reasonable.

Rational investors make decisions based on numeric facts and the strategies that they believe to be helpful. However, reasonable investors make decisions based on realistic aspects.

To give you an example, a rational investing strategy may say that you have a 60–40 chance of making big money, and the rational investor would just look at the bright side and jump in head first. However, a reasonable investor will look at the impact that the downside might have.

If the strategy fails, and chances are that it might, how big is the impact? If it affects the happiness of my family, or if it puts the future of my kids in danger, then it’s not for me.

Another key point is, that although reasonable strategies may sometimes be technically imperfect, they are more likely to stick around for the long run, which as we already talked about, is an important factor in financial success.

These were some of my biggest takeaways from this book. Hope you liked reading this. Thank you for your time. Make sure to follow and share!

Life’s greatest lessons from death

October 26, 2024 words by ken

Introduction

Elderly advice is an interesting subject to deal with. As children and as young adults, we despise it, but as we mature with age, we crave it a lot more. I believe this to be true in most cases, most definitely in mine.

As a 25-year-old, I crave the sound wisdom of the elderly. Especially when it comes to finding happiness and success. But I still remember the days I hated hearing advice. I still remember trying to distance myself from people who constantly shared their experiences and life lessons, and I’m glad to know I’m not that same person now.

In this post, I would like to talk about Tuesdays with Morrie, a book that revolves around the life of a dying ex-professor and his former student who spent a lot of time together discussing life.

It’s the story of how a student-teacher relationship found itself back in a classroom setting and soon blossomed into a father-son kind of relationship.

Short Summary

The author of this book, Mitch Albom was a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Morrie Schwartz, who the whole book is based on, was Albom’s ex-professor at Brandeis University. In August of 1994, Morrie began the fight with the biggest challenge of his life when he was diagnosed with ALS(amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

Many years after graduating college, Mitch Albom learns about his professor’s fight with ALS through a television show. To Albom’s surprise, he heard Morrie Schwartz on TV while flipping channels on a random day.

Here’s a little backstory on how Morrie ended up on TV. Morrie had this habit of jotting down his thoughts on different kinds of pads, papers envelopes, etc. These were aphorisms on living close by to death. Amazed by his writings, a fellow Brandeis professor sent them to a reporter who came out and wrote a long feature story on Morrie.

When this article caught the eye of the producer of the Nightline show, he decided to do an interview with Morrie. In March of 1995, the camera crew arrived at Morrie’s house to shoot the interview.

As soon as he found out about Morrie, Albom wanted to pay a visit to his ex-professor and check on his health. They embraced each other with the warm teacher-student love that they had shared many years ago.

After a wonderful conversation, Albom decides to catch up with Morrie whenever he can as he loves the conversations about life.

Remembering the classes they had on Tuesdays back in college, they decided to meet every Tuesday going forth.

This book talks about the 14 Tuesdays that they spent together and the valuable life lessons that Morrie wanted to share with the world.

Let’s dive deeper into this book and look at some of the best life lessons that we can learn from Morrie.

The topic of discussion for the 14 Tuesdays

The world
Feeling sorry for yourself
Regrets
Death
Family
Emotions
Fear of aging
Money
How love goes on
Marriage
Our Culture
Forgiveness
The perfect day
Goodbye

Key Takeaways

Facing adversaries with a positive attitude

One of the things that I loved about this book was Morrie’s perspective on the whole situation. Diagnosed with a deadly disease, and living with the anticipation of helplessness and death, one would usually expect the person to crumble in fear and sadness every day.

But that wasn’t the case with Morrie. He looked forward to his death. He looked forward to his death as another phase of his life that he could make the most of. Instead of drowning in sadness, he began to cherish everything he had.

He also did something that might seem a bit bizarre for many. He gathered a bunch of people and arranged his funeral just so he could hear all the nice things that people had to say about him before his departure.

This seems to be like he didn’t want to leave anything behind here, he wanted to experience every good thing before he left.

2. Being prepared for death can make you more involved in your life

This point might make you wonder, why should I be prepared for my death if I’m not fighting against a deadly disease like Morrie was? Well, it’s safe to say that no matter how healthy, rich or powerful one might be, death is inevitable.

You never know the day or the hour, but you know it’s coming, and you can only hope it’s not near. This realization can make you look at life through a different lens. It makes you live every day like it’s your last and makes you cherish every moment that you can.

Here’s what Morrie tells us on how to prepare to die –

“ Do what Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’ “

Knowingly or not, we are too focused on materialistic things. Death shows us a lot of smaller things in life that have more value but are taken for granted most times, like health, relationships, love, etc.

3. Forgiveness

Learn to forgive and forget. Forgive yourself for the mistakes of the past and forgive others for theirs. We can never take our grudges or regrets to the grave, no matter how big they might be.

Having a deadline in his life gave Morrie the chance to correct himself.

“I mourn my dwindling time, but cherish the chances it gives me to make things right”

For us who live without this deadline, it is all the more important to correct ourselves soon. Never let your pride or ego get in the way of forgiveness.

What you’ve read till now is just a glimpse of the wisdom that there is in this book. These are three of my many takeaways. I hope this helps you the same way it helped me. Thanks for reading!