But when you’re following a dream any long highway will do, so you can pick your own.
After a couple of hours on 80, rationality kicked in a bit and the boy began to have real doubts about taking Dad’s car, although he was pissed about the job—and maybe he even lost a little faith in the dream for a few minutes. He decided to turn around and head home, like any respectable kid should, and try to renegotiate things—although communication with his parents had never been good. If he turned back now, no one would ever know that he had even been out on Route 80. That was the boy’s thinking at the time, but the divine Mind had other plans.
Synchronicity intervened, gracefully but with awesome power. The boy was close to making a U-turn across the midway when something totally uncanny and unexpected happened that changed his life forever—and ultimately for the better.
Rather than crossing over the median, the car barely made it to the right shoulder of the highway as the generator failed and the entire engine went dead. It was still dark, but the sun was beginning to rise. The boy had all of fifty dollars in his wallet, no credit cards, and there at the intersection of Route 80 with Route 215 near Milton and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, there was nothing visible for miles but wheat fields and cornstalks. The boy felt like the generator had broken as an act of God, and for one good reason: the universe was now forcing him to live out his dream. And since he was now pretty far from home, there was no turning back.
So the boy did what only an adolescent male with limited management skills and a typical underdeveloped frontal cortex might do. He took a pencil from the glove compartment and carefully printed in large block letters the following note on a scrap of paper:
To the Pennsylvania State Police:
Please return this car to Henry my dad,
44 Davison Lane East
West Islip, New York
Call 516-669-5655.
—His son, who just quit the lampshade factory for good
Just as the sun was rising, the boy stood on the side of Route 80 with his thumb out, his classical guitar case and backpack full of spiritual books at his side, and prayed for a ride. The very first vehicle that came along, a big white truck, pulled over and the driver yelled out, “Okay, kid, where you headed?”
And the boy responded, “Thanks, sir. Goin’ west, looks like!”
“Well, how far?”
“Far, sir!”
“Well, not sure where far is, but I can get you to Chicago, so jump in. My name is Gary.”
“Okay, I had an uncle named Gary, but his liver failed. He almost drank himself to death in Africa and came home to live in Connecticut. He visited the house once or twice but was falling all over the place. He was too far gone to take any interest in me, even though I got my middle name to honor the guy. Those heavy drinkers give up everything for one thing when they could give up one thing for everything.”
“No drinking here, kid, not on the road.” Gary had a Bible on the seat and a wooden cross hanging from the big mirror in front of him.
“So what are you doing out here, kid?”
And the boy told him about the lampshade factory and then a little about the dream. Gary was very quiet as the boy spoke and looked deeply pensive. He was a good listener, and very present in the moment. After the boy finished, there was a long silence.
“Well, kid, that Mercedes 190 back there and the note, it should make its way back to your dad, but he won’t be happy. That’s a long way from Long Island. You sure you want to head west? You should at least call home.”
As Gary spoke, he pointed to the towering mountains and steep, rocky granite cliffs right at the edge of Route 80 after you pass that Lewisburg/Milton exit.
“Did you ever see mountain cliffs like that, kid?”
“No, but wow! They are amazing,” answered the boy.
“Up on that one over in the distance you can see a big white cross at the top. People along Route 80 have all done things that they probably shouldn’t have. We all do. But down here below the cross we are all still okay, because even when we don’t look up and think about that cross as we drive on by, we are always covered by it. Still, you need to call your mom,” he said, without sounding judgmental.
“Kid,” he continued, “you still have to try to do your best and someday, somehow you will make the most of things.”
“I might have handled this better, Gary,” I replied. “But the car broke down and there was this dream and the world needs dreamers. Plus, I really wanted that tutoring job. Dad, he will get the car back somehow. I should be okay heading west. I will get back at some point, I guess. Anyway, the car breaking when it did was some kind of quantum alchemy. It happened for a reason.
“Well, you never really quite get back to where you left from in the same way. But that’s not too bad, kid,” said Gary. “And your dad will eventually get his car. So let’s head to Chicago. But it’s early morning, so I will say a prayer. Yup, way kind of leads on to way.”
And Gary improvised a prayer out loud for the boy and his journey to the west, ending with, “Now Lord, wherever this boy goes and whatever he does, let your Light shine on his highway, and protect him from every kind of danger because he could get in trouble. So take care of him please, and take care of his parents, and let him learn from all this. Amen.” It was deeper than anything the boy had ever heard, heartfelt rather than formulaic.
***
As the morning sun started to shine brightly and puffy white clouds filled the Ohio skies, the boy began to feel tranquility. Forgetting about the car and how angry Dad was going to be, he fell asleep and woke up in Indiana.
Around noon they pulled into a McDonald’s and Gary treated the boy to lunch. Gary was tall and thin and dressed in Western style, his well-worn jeans and red-and-white checked shirt topped with a brown leather vest. He carried himself with grace and was careful about what he said. He was kind to the boy.
“Kid, maybe you could call your mom now from that booth,” he suggested.
“Not now, maybe later for sure. I’m not certain what I would say,” answered the boy.
The boy didn’t take the journey so much as it took him. We are all more taken than in control, and the journey finds us even if we are not quite clear about seeking it. That includes mechanical failures on Route 80. Sure, we have some control over our lives, but so much that happens to us is a surprise. The boy had no idea, for example, that the generator would break near Lewisburg. Okay, you can say that, when it happened, he should have waited for the police and called home. But he was so tired of cutting cardboard, so mad about not doing his summer tutoring job, that he was ready for a big escape. Was it infinite Mind that caused the generator to break down and stopped that big white truck as soon as the boy stuck out his thumb? It all happened so quickly, it felt like a perfect divine setup. A lot of things that happen are much more set up than we realize, but we need to notice this and listen to the whispers.
Backtracking to Birth
As far as the boy was concerned, even his conception smacked of synchronicity.
He owed his
