To a Despondent Boy ~

Has anyone ever told you
a time is coming when,
without your doing,
something great will happen to you?
A waking experience,
that will shake you
to the depths of your being.

Know that it is coming,
so that when it does
you will not run away.

Be not afraid.
It will all happen
before you realize what it is.
But once it does
it will become a new person.

You will find yourself in a wild storm,
you will be battered and born aloft,
you will lose all orientation and
be set out on a path
you never knew existed.
The life you had lived
will be overturned,
and you will look out and find
a new world.

You will discover
forces in you
that you knew nothing about.
Forces stronger than you
that you must soon
learn to harness,
lest they run away with you.

You will taste rapture
and feel a new unknown strength
from out of your heart.
It will frighten you.
You will try
to rid yourself of it,
but you will no be able,
for it has become part of you.

A fire will be enkindled
that you will not be able to escape.
A devastating fire
that will lay waste to your past.
You will be confronted with
a fascinating, strange newness
and will slowly learn how
to live with it.

You will be greatly amazed
at the potential you have found.
You will be invited
to understand things,
to experience fullness and fruition.
You will become creative.
You will not know where to go
to find peace or hide away
with your ecstatic,
overflowing happiness.
You will have been
born again in a world
you never knew existed
and you will be new.

And when you are old
you will look back on what happened then,
always with amazement and wonder,
still not knowing
what it was,
but you will ever gravitate back
to that highest summit of your life.