North Star Writers Group

I was trapped inside a large office building. I couldn’t find a way out. I looked everywhere. I ran down hallways. I cut through offices. There were no exits.

I saw a staircase in the distance. I ran to it. As I approached it I realized that it was just the shadow of a staircase behind a wall. I knew what I had to do. I dropped my shoulder and broke through the wall. I landed on the stairs and started to climb as fast as I could.

I ran and I ran up the stairs. But there were no exits. I began to panic. What if there was no escape? And then I saw a thin line of light above. It appeared to be a light beneath a door to the outside. As I got closer I could see it was an exit. I sprinted. I reached the top and lunged for the door. It flew wide open, and I kept running. I looked up; I was horrified. I was on the roof of a skyscraper and I was headed for the side of the building. I tried to stop, but the roof sloped steeply down to the edge. My momentum was too great.

I knew my life would soon be over. I reached the side of the tower and I began to take flight. And in the last moment before certain death, my right hand caught a lip on the edge of the roof. I held on with everything I had. I was now dangling by my fingers a hundred stories above the ground.

And then I woke up.

I was breathing heavily. My heart was racing. I was wet with sweat. Yet my mind was clear. The symbolism of my dream became evident to me. I felt trapped on a path. I was locked inside a tower with no exits. I struggled to find a way out, and when I did, my life hung in the balance. My future was clinging to a decision I had to make, one I had been thinking about for three months. I needed to explore what I wanted to do with my life. I could no longer let life’s opportunities pass me by. I needed to do everything I had ever dreamed about. The dream was the final sign.

And so I made the decision. I took a year off from school to pursue my interests.

I worked part-time to cover the expenses of my exploration. I went to concerts, lectures, plays and poetry readings. I became a DJ at the campus radio station. I joined AIESEC, an international leadership organization located on nearly 1,000 university campuses in 100 countries. Through AIESEC I represented the United States at an international congress in Innsbruck, traveled throughout Western and Eastern Europe and worked in West Berlin for two months. And then I received a scholarship from the Yale Center for British Art to study in London for the summer.

I did not plan these opportunities. They came after I started exploring. My search led me to a whole new set of possibilities, and a better understanding of what I love, and what I do well. My year off from school was one of the most rewarding periods of my life. I found my path.

Do you have a similar decision you need to make? Is there something you would like to do with your life? What if you could make time to do it?

Pay attention to your daydreams. Pay attention to your dreams at night. Listen for what’s really important to you.

Thirteenth-Century poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi wrote, “Though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.”

Our dreams during the day or night are telling us something. What are your dreams telling you?

Over the next three columns we’ll explore how you can pursue your true path in life.

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This is Column # DJP013. Request permission to publish here.