It was the end of lunch period and the screen doors to the cafeteria slammed behind me on my way out. I grabbed my books and walked to the stairwell leading to the long day’s 4th period class. I was in a three-story, Spanish mission-style building with a bell tower and red tile roof.

I always thought it was a rather mysterious stairwell. It was not frequently used by the hundreds of students at the high school.
I had spent large chunks of time during morning classes staring at the clock, taking notes, listening to my teachers drone on. Dutifully attentive, from all appearance, I did try to be a good student. I respected my teachers, although I didn’t have too many that I could say inspired me.

My mind wandered. I doodled in a notebook — the same words (the name of the beach in faraway South Carolina where I and my family spent summer vacations). Also, geometrical configurations, over and over again, bored by the tedium of daily life at school.

Glancing out my World History class window to the porches in the adjacent neighborhood, I gazed fondly at the modest houses. People were sitting in their metal rocking chairs, idly watching the goings-on in the street and along the sidewalks. There wasn’t much to notice in the middle of the morning on a weekday. But I envied their precious freedom. For I was briefly a prisoner in the school buidling they probably looked at all day and never gave a thought to.

The stairwell went up three flights.

After I left the cafeteria and was proceeding to the third floor, as I did every day, I looked up to the small skylight, always open to the blue firmament above on cloudless days in spring when every thought I had at those moments was of anticipation of the day’s deliverance, freedom from long and seemingly unendurable school days. I wistfully and longingly looked up at the sky from within the stairwell, wishing I was home. As I always did.

That particular day, I just kept walking. When I reached the top, it was as if the stairs continued. So I ventured on. It got darker, the light from the familiar opening in the roof became dimmer and dimmer. I didn’t know what was going on. But I couldn’t stop.

After a few minutes, I noticed the skylight was gone. I was alone, surrounded by thousands of stars, countless stars, more than I had ever seen before. And they were not far off, either, but all around me. It was cold, but I was not cold. There was nothing around me in either direction.
I started walking again, and the light from those thousands of stars illuminated a path, and everywhere I looked, it seemed like there were showers of silver glitter streaking across the night sky.

The last thing I remember was the light swirling around me in the darkness and disappearing into a tiny opening not far off in the distance.

I tried walking toward that light, but I awoke suddenly and realized I had been dreaming. But instead of feeling strange, disoriented and anxious, as I often did after waking from most of my dreams, this time I momentarily felt a deep sense of peace. Of all dreams, why did that one have to end, and end so mysteriously.

I would like to write that I followed the swirling band of light which had originated at the skylight, and was able to enter the opening where I found the peace and freedom I longed for in a beautiful land of rainbows and waterfalls, where the beings who resided there lived in harmony, and were compassionate, understanding, and at peace. I could paint a word picture of my imagined Paradise.

All of us can hope and long for fulfillment of the broken dreams and unfinished destinies we experience and work our way toward in this physical realm of sensual delights and awful shadows. But again, the future is unknown.

Instead, I can choose to live in the present moment, which is all I have ever had, and find real streams in quiet woods. Or I can find cool water seeping out of an actual spring high in a mountain oasis in the desert. I have been to just such a place, and I can tell you, it is truly a foretaste of what we are capable of knowing and experiencing now. Finding our way to deeper and deeper understandind of life through art, poetry, writing, and reading what both great and ordinary minds and souls have written m, painted and created — all this comprises The Path.

The Path takes us on a journey to many places. We can let ourselves be consumed by our work or become dependent for our happiness on others. We can become pre-occupied or obsessed with outward distractions, temptations, longings and desires. Or, we can focus at last on the purification and redemption of our souls. For if we are spiritual beings whose ultimate destiny is union with God, our creator, how can we ignore this?

We must ask ourselves the fundamental questions: Why are we here on Earth? What are we called to do? How are we to achieve our destiny?

Along the way we share in the lives of others, in whatever ways we are destined to be a part of those lives. And we are inspired by circumstance, empathy, friendship, and love to show compassion and mercy, and to help others in whatever ways we can. By doing so, we can make this world a better place in which to live.

Finally, and most importantly, as the great saint wrote, “There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

I think we find what we are looking for in real time, and at long last, if we live mindfully each day of this journey that is given to us. We know only too well when we thwart our true destiny and stray from our individual “illuminated paths,” which are really nothing more than the daily walks through life that we are given each morning to renew in gratitude, or else to start all over again when we rise and face the new day. For each day is truly unlike any other that came before, or that will follow.