Country: Bulgaria
Name: Mariyana Anastasova
Category: Story


A short poem about that people must firstly stop, breathe deaply and than doon they best way, they could do it.

“My road is pure, bright, and safe.” I use this as a mantra every time I set off somewhere. It's been a long time since I learned that the mind and the reality you experience have a lot in common. If I say that the mind creates reality, some people would think it too extreme; still, the truth is that I firmly believe this, and situations from my experience have proven it more than once. This is what I am thinking again, while waiting for the plane to take off and take the celestial highways. Something is happening. For more than 10 minutes, the Austrian plane has been circling around the runway at the Brussels’ airport before we hear from the cockpit that there is some sort of problem with the engine and that we should be patient while it is being solved. I don’t notice panic among the passengers, but when we pass more than an hour in the metal airbox, most of them are nervously looking around and tapping their feet. We take off at last. I look at my watch and see that I will miss my connection for Sofia, which I am supposed to take after this flight, in Vienna. I start calculating right away just how much my plans will be frustrated. My first reaction is one of annoyance and regret that things aren’t going as planned. I was supposed to arrive in Sofia at 11 pm and then travel for about 2 hours to get home. It won’t be possible now. My daughter will be upset; she wanted me to come home tonight so much. While these thoughts are crossing my mind, I decide to remain faithful to my principle of looking for a positive perspective in everything that happens and start repeating to myself that it's all for the better.

I arrive in Sofia the following morning on the next flight. I take my car and head home. Shortly after, I feel fatigue starting to play tricks on me. The sun is in my eyes, I feel hypnotized and soon I realize that I’m driving as if on automatic pilot. Luckily, I'm on a highway, I tell myself. I drink water, rub my eyes, put the volume up – nothing helps. Shouldn't I stop for a while? Come on, big deal! You haven't slept for a night and you got soft. Drink some coffee! I can’t! I've already drunk four cups this morning! Then sing along with the radio, it’ll wake and cheer you up! This is the first time I have felt what a terrible thing fatigue is, whose essence is truly unknown. Relaxing is the worst, and most awful of all is the bliss that starts filling your entire being, when every fiber of your body craves to merge with a space where there is no pressure, no stress, even no emotions, because there is nothing at all. I vaguely remember reading somewhere about people who almost froze to death in the mountains, saying that at one moment you long to relax and fall asleep so much that you stop thinking of anything else. You no longer know who you are, what you are or why you are here. They must have felt like me at that moment – another idle thought slowly creeping into my mind. God, I have to do something. I feel like I'm driving asleep! Come on, I want to wake up! Why doesn't my body obey?

Before my eyes I see the sign of the tunnel I know so well. I've passed through here countless times. I also know that when I left from Sofia I switched the headlights on. So now I check the lever only mechanically, to be sure. Everything is fine. I enter the tunnel, and… complete darkness! I am very confused at first. It seems that from the semi-awake state I was in, I have passed into another dimension. There are no lights ahead of me, and none on the tunnel’s ceiling. I remember that these lights keep breaking down and are often out of order. The darkness mobilizes all my senses – I can't see a thing! Thank God my dashboard is lit! Is there no end to this tunnel? Am I moving forward at all? It is as if in a mysterious story, written in the style of psycho-thrillers. I’m already wondering if this is really happening when I notice a slight clearing in front of me. Stronger, brighter… Light! At last! I go out!

I turn off and stop at the first convenient place. Cars shoot past me and the road is like a hot snake’s skin, folded and grey with time. There is no sign of my previous sleepy condition. My brain is working a hundred times faster than normal and my mind, used to looking for signs in every event, is feverishly thinking over three questions: Why me? Why this? Why now? With a clear awareness that we don’t have permanent access to the bottomless pit of information in the Universe, I start going over my experiences during the last 24 hours. At first glance there is nothing special, but then I think of the mantra: “My road is pure, bright, and safe.” I start realizing that if I had not missed that connection in Vienna, I would have been traveling alone in the middle of the night… and if my lights would have suddenly gone off… Who knows what might have happened? And then my road would not have been pure, bright, and safe. So it had to be this way.

Maybe mantras are our connection with another world, whose rules sometimes occur to us but which we do not always understand. It is enough to know about them.