Understanding People's Currency
A book review and take away from; The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
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Derisha Amalia Putri, October 2026
During a business trip to Kuala Lumpur, I picked up three books, one of which was The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
I finished The Alchemist in about a day and a half. It is a short book, but one that stayed with me long after I turned the final page. As with any book, I am sure different readers will take away different lessons. What follows is simply a personal reflection on some of the thoughts and questions it left with me. The story stayed with me, and writing down its lessons felt like a reminder way to continue the journey after I had closed the book.
For me, The Alchemist is a story about understanding people's currency.
During my first reading of The Alchemist, I found myself repeatedly thinking about a simple word: currency.
Not because the story talks much about wealth or money, but because nearly every character seemed to be paying for something.
Some paid with certainty. Some paid with comfort. Some paid with years of their lives. Others refused to pay at all.
What fascinated me was that although each person was pursuing a different dream,
they all appeared to be operating under a similar law: every choice required an exchange.
The more I reflected on Santiago's journey, the more I began to wonder about the currency people carry through life.
We all seem to possess it. We all spend it.
We all protect certain parts of it. Yet not all of us value the same currency, nor are we willing to exchange it at the same rate.
Perhaps that is why the story stayed with me.
You may read the same book and arrive at a completely different interpretation. That is part of its beauty. Coelho leaves enough space for the reader to enter the story and discover a meaning of their own. What follows is simply mine.
Spoiler alert: If you have not read the book and plan to do so, you may want to stop here. Otherwise, let us begin.
1. The Alchemist and People's Currency
The story begins with Santiago, a shepherd (penggembala domba). In many ways, I think we all carry a little of Santiago within us. He lives a simple life tending his sheep.
That is his current state of currency: being a shepherd. It is familiar, predictable, and safe. His sheep give him stability and comfort. Yet he begins to receive messages through "omens" that invite him towards a different life.
What is omens? From my pov, in an Islamic context, I might understand such moments as guidance from Allah: something that arrives unexpectedly through a person we meet, a verse that suddenly speaks directly to our circumstances, or a coincidence that feels too meaningful to ignore.
The message does not always arrive with certainty. Sometimes it arrives only as a quiet invitation to pay attention.
Before reading the book, I understood an alchemist mainly as someone who attempted to turn ordinary metal into gold.
After finishing it, I saw the alchemist as a symbol of transformation, not merely the transformation of metal, but the transformation of a person.
Santiago does not know where his "omens" will take him.
Life often works in the same way: we are rarely given certainty before we act. The answers begin to reveal themselves only after we take the first step.
From Santiago, I learnt that faith is not knowing the outcome. Faith is continuing to move towards what matters, even when the whole path is not yet visible.
That is Santiago's initial currency, A Shepperd with Faith
2. The Profit and Loss of People's Currency
Throughout Santiago's journey, he encounters people who choose safety over possibility.
They are not necessarily unhappy, nor are they wrong. They simply decide that preserving what they already have is more important than discovering what could be.
Comfort often disguises itself as wisdom. We tell ourselves that staying where we are is the practical choice.
We call it responsibility, maturity, or realism. Yet sometimes, if we are completely honest, it is fear dressed in a more acceptable form.
This does not mean that every comfort zone must be abandoned. It simply means we should understand its cost. Pursuing a dream may cost certainty, while protecting certainty may cost possibility.
What struck me most is that throughout Santiago's journey, every gain seems to require an exchange. He repeatedly lets go of something valuable: his familiar life, his possessions, his plans, and even, for a time, the people he loves.
Perhaps that is what people's currency really is. We do not pay only with money. We pay with comfort, certainty, security, relationships, pride, time, and sometimes even old versions of ourselves.
Like any exchange, there is profit and loss.
Santiago loses stability but gains experience. He loses certainty but gains faith. He loses the familiar but discovers a larger world.
The book reminded me that the question is not whether we will experience profit or loss.
The question is whether the person we become is worth the currency we exchange.
Because sometimes letting go is not a loss at all. Sometimes it is simply the price of becoming a new version of ourselves
3. The Different Forms of People's Currency:
The Englishman, Santiago and The Crystal Merchant
One of the things I found most fascinating in The Alchemist is how Paulo Coelho presents three different responses to a dream through the Englishman, the Crystal Merchant, and Santiago.
The Englishman pays with time and study, believing knowledge will reveal the secrets of the world.
Santiago pays with uncertainty, learning through mistakes, loss, and experience.
The Crystal Merchant, however, chooses not to make the exchange at all. He dreams of travelling to Mecca but never pursues it, afraid that achieving the dream might leave him with nothing left to aspire to.
Through these three characters, I began to see that people's currency is not the same for everyone. Some pay with comfort. Some pay with certainty. Some pay with pride, security, or years of effort. And some choose to keep their currency rather than spend it.
The book does not suggest that one choice is entirely right or wrong.
Both Santiago and the Crystal Merchant pay a price. Santiago sacrifices stability in pursuit of possibility. The Merchant gains stability but carries the weight of an unfulfilled dream.
Perhaps life is not about finding a path without sacrifice.
Perhaps it is about deciding which price we are willing to pay, and which regret we are more willing to live with: the regret of trying and failing, or the regret of never trying at all
4. The Exchange That Changes Us:
The Person Who Begins the Journey Is Not the Person Who Finishes It
As Santiago travels, he transforms. His destination remains the same, but he is no longer the same person pursuing it.
That reflection led me to think about our own life.
Looking back, there has never been only one version of ourselves. For me, there was Derisha 1.0, shaped by childhood curiosity and innocence. Then came Derisha 2.0, learning to navigate friendship, ambition, and failure. Derisha 3.0 emerged through new experiences, family, motherhood, career milestones, and personal growth.
Today, I may be Derisha 4.0 or 5.0. Honestly, I no longer know the version number...
What I do know is that I am not the same person I was ten years ago, or even five years ago.
Every chapter of life has transformed me in some way.
Certain parts of my old self have faded, while others have become stronger.
And perhaps this is where I finally understood what I mean by people's currency.
When I first started reading The Alchemist, I thought people's currency was simply the cost of leaving a comfort zone.
But as I reflected more deeply, I realised it is much broader than that.
People's currency is everything we must exchange in order to become a different version of ourselves.
Sometimes we exchange certainty for possibility.
Sometimes we exchange security for growth.
Sometimes we exchange pride for humility.
Sometimes we exchange the approval of others for authenticity.
And sometimes, the most expensive exchange is letting go of an old identity that no longer serves who we are becoming.
Santiago did not only exchange sheep for treasure. Along his journey, he exchanged certainty for faith, familiarity for experience, and comfort for transformation.
In return, he gained something far more valuable than gold.
He became someone different.
Perhaps that is why every new version of ourselves carries both gains and losses.
Growth is never free. Every transformation demands a payment. The question is not whether we will pay.
The question is what are we paying with, and what are we becoming in return?
Like Santiago, we are constantly evolving. There is no final version of ourselves.
There is only the next version, shaped by the people we meet, the challenges we face, and the dreams we choose to pursue.
But how do we know whether our next version is moving in the right direction?
One scene that stayed with me was the story of the spoon filled with oil.
The young man is asked to carry the spoon with oil in it while also observing the wonders of the world around him.
At first, he focuses so much on protecting the oil that he fails to appreciate the beauty surrounding him.
Later, when he becomes captivated by the world, he spills the oil.
For me, those drops of oil represent the most important currency we possess.
Not our money.
Not our careers.
Not our achievements.
But our values, our conscience, and what we call hati nurani.
Life will invite us to explore the world, pursue ambitions, build careers, seek recognition, and collect experiences.
Along the way, we may gain many things. Yet if those gains come at the expense of our conscience, then perhaps the exchange rate becomes invaluable.
The lesson is not to stop exploring. The lesson is to remember what we are carrying while we explore.
5. Learning About Love's Currency from Fatima
Fatima's perspective changed the way I understood love in The Alchemist. When Santiago reaches the oasis and meets her, it is easy to believe that he has already found his treasure. He has crossed the desert, endured uncertainty, and found someone he truly loves.
Like many readers, I expected the journey to end there. After all, love is so often portrayed as the ultimate reward.
But Fatima sees something deeper. She does not ask Santiago to stay, nor does she ask him to choose between love and his dream. She encourages him to continue his journey.
Her message, 'If I am really part of your dream, you will come back one day,' is not a promise of certainty.
It is an expression of faith. Fatima chooses faith over control, that is her love's currency.
What touched me most is that she understands the danger of Santiago's journey.
There is no guarantee he will return.
She knows she may grieve deeply if he does not, but she would not reduce his journey to a failure.
Her love does not make him stay. It gives him the freedom to become who he is called to become.
That is a demanding form of love: realistic about risk, tender enough to grieve, and strong enough not to possess.
Final Thoughts: Returning to the Sycamore Tree
At the end of the fable, the treasure is found where Santiago's journey began: beneath the sycamore tree growing among the ruins of the old sacristy.
By then, Santiago has travelled across deserts, lost what he owned, found love, faced death, learnt to listen to the world, and searched for something that had been near him all along.
He has exchanged wealth, certainty, comfort, and older versions of himself. Yet what endures is not simply what remains in his pocket. It is the person he has become and the dream he was willing to follow.
Do you know whom he finally learned the treasure's location from? It was from a man who laughs at dreams.
That laughing man had once dreamed of treasure beneath a sycamore tree in an abandoned church where a shepherd used to lie down.
but he considered himself too rational to pursue it.
The same dream reaches two people. One dismisses it. One follows it.
I do not think The Alchemist is telling us that every dream will lead to treasure, or that we must constantly abandon comfort simply to increase our value.
The deeper question is what remains within us after every exchange, and for what purpose we are making it.
Santiago does not find the treasure because he knows the answer from the beginning.
He finds it because he is willing to walk without knowing, to accept uncertainty as part of the exchange, and to keep listening as he changes.
Perhaps our own sycamore tree has been there all along. Yet sometimes we need the journey, the uncertainty, the losses, the love, the people we meet, and all the versions of ourselves we become before we are finally able to recognise it.