I was born in the Bronx to a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican mother and a sixteen-year-old immigrant father from the Dominican Republic. At the time, my mother lived in foster care before being moved to a group home for teenage moms. They named me Robert Caraballo.

As a toddler, I was adopted by Victor and Dorothy Crapanzano, my mother’s previous foster parents. They changed my name to Robert Crapanzano.

Throughout their forty years as foster parents, Vic and Dot raised over seventy children, including their two biological children, three adopted children, grandchildren, and several dozen foster children, many of whom had disabilities. Although they are frequently called saints, they are much more than that.

When I married for the second time, I took my wife’s name and have since gone by Robert Solano.

I have many names, but you may call me by any name you choose.

As a child and young adult, I was raised in the Catholic tradition. I was baptized and received all my sacraments, including First Communion, Penance or Confession, Confirmation, and Matrimony. I was an altar boy through adolescence and a devout Catholic through early adulthood, while also exploring Zen Buddhism and Kung Fu as a teenager.

I attended Catholic elementary and high school, learning in the traditions of the Dominican Sisterhood of nuns in schools named after Saint Augustine and Saint Albert the Great. For college, I attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, and later Georgia Tech, Embry-Riddle, and then Capitol Technology University, earning my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, master’s degree in aerospace engineering, master’s certificate in aviation science, and doctorate in technology.

I served in the Army for twenty-one years, deploying multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Blackhawk pilot, and later managing multi-billion dollar defense programs. Leading soldiers was the pride of my military career. Unfortunately, I have seen too many of my friends die in combat and have watched many more take their own lives due to the physical and emotional wounds sustained in combat. Still, I am a proud American.

In my twenties, I got married and then divorced. For a long time after that, I carried a lot of pain and felt unworthy of love.

Finally, I met my true love, Zaira Solano, and we gave birth to three beautiful children. I am a loving husband and father, and I try my best to be a decent human.

For the record, I am Afro-Latino. I have brown skin, curly black hair, and dark brown eyes.

I am the descendant of tribes from the areas we now know as Andalusia, Spain, and Portugal; the African nations of West Africa—Senegambian and Guinean, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Congolese, and others; of Arawak Taínos from the islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, as well as their ancestors from the areas we know as Venezuela, South America, and Central America. I have ancestors who were Mayan, Ashkenazi Jewish, and Mesopotamian.

My adopted family is Italian, Irish, Polish, and Ukrainian. My ancestors hail from areas we now know as Sicily and greater Italy, Poland and Ukraine, England, Scotland, Ireland, and others. Some of my family was the first generation of Americans to arrive at Plymouth Rock.

My ancestors walked to America through the Bering Land Bridge. They were wayfarers who set sail across the ocean in canoes. They were Pilgrims who sailed here aboard the Mayflower. They sailed here in both the master’s and the slave quarters of slave ships. They traveled to Ellis Island holding their infant children.

I am the child of countless generations of men and women who hoped and dreamed for something special for their offspring.

I am the Son of Man.

I was finishing my morning coffee when the radio crackled with the announcement: “Fallen Angel.”

All activity ceased. The operations center became silent. My team’s and my attention focused on the radio. A Blackhawk helicopter had crashed in Kandahar province —callsign “Ozzie 72,” named after Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness.

We pulled up the live feed from the Gray Eagle drone. On the side of the Afghanistan mountain, a large black plume of smoke rose into the air. Zooming in, we saw the wrecked fuselage of a helicopter engulfed in smoke and flames.

Looking around the rugged mountain terrain at the site: no bodies, no movement. It was clear that all on board were dead.

The flight company was small, only about twenty pilots and twenty crew chiefs. Although I was assigned as the chief operations officer for the sister support battalion, I still flew combat missions with the flight company once or twice a week. The pilots and crew chiefs there were my friends, my brothers and sisters in arms. Now, at least four of them were dead.

Usually, our missions involved flying SEAL Team 3, searching for bad guys in Kandahar province. The previous day, I had encouraged my intelligence collection sergeant to join the mission to see what it was like “outside the wire.” Now, I realized that some of those SEALs and my own soldier whom I sent out on the mission may also have been killed.

For the next few hours, I barely had time to process the emotional impact of the events. As the chief operations officer, I was responsible for coordinating the recovery of the aircraft and the bodies. The aircraft was not salvageable, but we had to do everything we could to recover the bodies, or whatever was left of them.

I prepared the casualty collection team for the mission. Making sure they inventoried their equipment, had accurate team rosters, and coordinated a Chinook helicopter for transport. All while wondering: which of my friends were dead? Was my soldier dead?

It was the most challenging day of my military career.

When my intelligence collection sergeant walked into the operations center a few hours later, we were all grateful. He had been in the other Blackhawk—the wingman—and was shell-shocked to have barely survived death. Others were not as lucky.

About three hours after the crash, operations had settled down enough for me to walk over to the flight company. There, I met my friend Macky, the commander of the unit. Relief washed over me to see him alive.

“Who was it?” I asked Macky.

“Hornsby, Krause, Essex, and Oliver-Galbteath.”

I spent the next few moments with the flight company, mostly in solemn silence.

“I got to get back to operations,” I told them as I departed, “Hang in there.”

As I walked back to my operations center, I found a wooden picnic bench, shaded by a camouflage netting and tucked behind some concrete blast walls. There I sat, and for the first time that day, wept uncontrollably.

Seven great Americans died that day.

Rest in my love: CW3 Brian D. Hornsby, CW2 Suresh N. Krause, SGT Richard A. Essex, SGT Luis A. Oliver-Galbreath, SO1 Pat Feeks, SO1 Dave Warsen, and EOD1 Sean Carson.

Over the next few weeks, we mourned their loss. We came together as a community, rendered military honors, and built a monument in their honor. That process taught me a lot about the grieving process.

A month after that, my wife asked me for a divorce.

And the wounds I sustained from that process were much worse.

When I departed Kyrgyzstan in December 2012, I knew that my marriage was on the rocks. I had just finished a year-long deployment to Afghanistan. It had been twelve months since I was last home in Hawaii, and I was eager to leave the arid mountains and freezing temperatures in exchange for the warm, sunny beaches of Oahu. I was also anxious to see my wife again.

The trip back took over forty-eight hours as I transitioned between airports in Asia, Siberia, and Seattle, before finally arriving in Honolulu. I was immediately greeted by 85-degree weather and sunburned tourists wearing floral-print aloha shirts and fresh orchid lei necklaces.

My wife at the time picked me up from the airport and drove us home. As we drove to the North Shore, we chatted about the dogs, our families, and work as if we were friends who had not seen each other in months.

After we left the city, the country road home took us through the Dole plantation, where endless rows of lush green pineapple bushes cut through the bright orange dirt. As we crested a large hill, I could suddenly see seven miles of beautiful aquamarine ocean and beaches. As we drove over that crest and I scanned the waves at my favorite surf spots, I began to tear up. After a year of arduous workdays, I was finally home, back to paradise.

My overseas assignment was difficult. As the chief operations officer for aviation maintenance operations, I usually worked at least twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week. Fortunately, my next assignment was a two-year paid sabbatical to complete my graduate degree at Georgia Tech.

I only had one month at home before having to pack up and leave for Atlanta. While I was overseas, my wife stayed in Hawaii. We were married for four years and lived in Hawaii for most of that time. In our case, distance did not make our hearts grow fonder. The overseas assignment strained our marriage and, upon my return, I knew that we were in trouble. While I was in Afghanistan, she had told me that she wanted a divorce, but I had hoped that I could save our marriage.

Four weeks later, my ex-wife and I filed for separation. The following day, I moved to Atlanta by myself. My month in Hawaii was made up of mixed feelings. I was excited to be back home in Hawaii but heartbroken that my marriage was clearly ending.

I don’t blame my ex-wife for the way our relationship ended. We grew apart over years for reasons that we were equally responsible for. Even though we split up on very cordial terms, the divorce still broke me. For years afterward, I felt like I was unworthy of love, and recovering from that experience was no quick process.

Although I don’t wish divorce on anyone, it did teach me an important lesson: a happy and successful marriage requires constant investment. I learned that the moment you begin to take your partner for granted is the moment that you begin to grow apart. I began to take my ex-wife for granted years before we got divorced, and by the time that we separated, there was no way to bring our relationship back together.

No matter how much you think you love each other, marriage is a fragile agreement. When I married my ex-wife, we thought that we would be together forever, “until death do us part.” But despite a great wedding and a few great years together, that didn’t happen. After I left Hawaii and moved to Atlanta, I never saw my ex-wife again.

After a couple weeks in Atlanta, I bought a luxury high-rise condo. I remember signing the mortgage paperwork and getting the keys from the real estate agent. After working nonstop for a year, I finally had some time to relax and enjoy life. It was a gorgeous condo with a sprawling view of downtown Atlanta. I was excited to move into my new home and bought a bottle of Moët & Chandon to celebrate. Regrettably, I didn’t have anyone to share the experience with.

My experience working like a maniac for a year and then arriving home and getting divorced is analogous to the series of events that many couples experience. People meet and fall in love as young professionals, then they spend the next ten or twenty years suffering evenings and weekends in order to climb up the corporate ladder. They work themselves unhealthy as they advance their businesses and careers and spend more and more time apart.

They do all this because they expect some type of paradise awaiting them at the end. For some couples, paradise is living off a pension or 401(k) and never needing to work again. For others, it’s a beautiful home in Hawaii. Whatever their intentions, when many people finally do have the time and resources to relax and enjoy life, they also find themselves divorced and alone.

As my marriage ended, and then for quite a while after, I would often wonder, Are my relationships doomed? Will I ever find love again?

And then I met Zaira.

I found Zaira late one night in 2012. I was browsing through profiles on Match.com and ZCurl2014’s photo caught my eye. I wish I could say that I took one look at her profile and immediately knew that she would be the one, but that wasn’t the case.

Her profile read like a job posting:

• Applicants must be intelligent, easygoing, extroverted, hardworking, have a good sense of humor, and be family-oriented.
• Must be taller than 6’0″.
• Must have gotten a teeth cleaning within the last six months.

She seemed like a no-nonsense type of woman. A teeth cleaning, really? I thought. This girl sounds stuck-up.

Normally, I would have passed on a girl like her, but damn, she was beautiful! The text of her profile may have been cold and abrasive, but her photos painted a different picture. She had long, curly hair, golden bronze skin, a drop-dead body, warm eyes, and a lovely smile.

I suspected that she was some type of hardworking professional, maybe a doctor, which would make sense since Emory University was a top-tier medical school nearby. One of her profile photos was actually a LinkedIn-style headshot. She probably spent her early twenties working her ass off, first in school, and then through residency. She probably didn’t have a lot of time to have fun and was tired of fuckboys or players who just wanted to party and hook up. She probably wanted a serious relationship. I also suspected that her life was a sprint, and she wanted someone who could keep up.

It was late at night when I messaged her. I was tipsy after a few too many glasses of wine.

To: ZCurl2014
Subject: It looks like you go H.A.M.

Hey Zaira,

It’s clear that you know exactly what you want in life and I respect that. I think it is awesome that you are a professional woman who also knows how to relax and have fun. Like you, I love traveling, great company, and great food—my favorite restaurant in town is Empire State South. What is your favorite spot?

Well, I think we would be a great fit and I hope to hear back from you soon.

Robert

Yes, the first message I ever sent to Zaira was a reference to the song, “Hard As a Motherfucker (H.A.M.)” by Jay-Z and Kanye West. It was not my proudest moment, but it was an accurate assessment.

The next day she replied—score!

We began emailing and texting each other. We seemed to have a connection and made plans to meet in person at Marlow’s Tavern, a local bar and grill. It was a Wednesday and I met her outside at twelve o’clock sharp. She wore heels, a pencil skirt, a blouse, and blazer. She was more gorgeous in person than in the photos and I was trying really hard not to mess it up.

I asked a lot of questions, and spent more time listening than talking. I intentionally avoided talking about work. Instead, I asked her questions about her favorite international trips and where she went salsa dancing in Atlanta, and we talked about our families. Neither of us had mentioned what we did for a living, but I could tell that she was not a doctor. Doctors in residency would never wear heels and a pencil skirt to a workday lunch, nor would they be driving a brand-new Infinity Q35.

She is probably a lawyer, I thought—a very hot lawyer.

After an hour-long lunch, we gave each other a hug and said our goodbyes. It felt like more of a power lunch than a first date.

Our second date was phenomenal. Over the course of five hours, we ate sushi, got dessert at a nearby café, took my dog for a walk, and drank wine while listening to Daft Punk vinyl on my balcony. We didn’t have sex, but we kissed each other a lot. Not only was my assessment correct—she was a lawyer—but she owned the whole firm.

I had been on a handful of dates without a lot of luck. I admit that, after being with my ex-wife for over seven years, I was horrible at dating. Zaira was incredibly beautiful, smart, ambitious, and kind. Over and over, I told myself, I can’t believe that this amazing woman likes me. Don’t screw this up, Robert.

On our third date, she told me her story. She had worked multiple jobs while in law school—bartending, working at law firms, serving at a steakhouse. After graduating in May 2011, she spent the entire summer preparing for the bar exam, studying ten to twelve hours a day until her hair fell out and her body went through stress-induced changes. When she passed, she immediately quit her job and started her own immigration law firm with just a cell phone, computer, and $100. Within a few years, she had grown it to over $1 million in annual revenue, expanded from Atlanta to offices in Alabama, Florida, and Mexico, employed over twenty people, and helped more than 1,000 immigrants live and work legally in the US. Zaira definitely went H.A.M.

I was falling in love, but beneath the romance, something darker was brewing inside me. The trauma from my divorce hadn’t healed—it had just gone dormant. Trauma doesn’t live in our memories or our thoughts; it lives in our nervous system. It creates patterns, triggers, and automatic responses that we often don’t even recognize until they’re already running the show.

My body remembered what my mind tried to forget: the long-distance relationship, feeling pressured to marry my ex-wife so that she would move with me, the slow creep of growing separate over the years, the gradual transformation from lovers to roommates, being on opposite sides of the globe due to military deployments, and ultimately, the pain of divorce.

When Zaira and I started dating, everything felt different. We were both sprinting through life at full speed—she was building a business empire, I was finishing my aerospace engineering degree at Georgia Tech while working on side projects and coding helicopter designs late into the night. We worked hard, but we played hard too.

It was great, but as our relationship deepened, my nervous system started sending alarm signals.

Then came the real trigger: my impending re-assignment to New Mexico. Part of my agreement with my the Army paying for graduate school was that I would take a three-year follow-on assignment after graduation. Reneging on that contract was not an option. Meanwhile, Zaira was the CEO and senior attorney at her law firm. She needed to be in Atlanta for the firm to be successful.

My nervous system went into overdrive. I had spent a year away from my ex-wife while working overseas, and that distance had killed our marriage. Now history was repeating itself. The same pattern. The same impossible choice between career and relationship. The same slow march toward inevitable separation.

Over and over, I asked Zaira the same question: “What are we going to do when I move?”

Her response was always the same: “We’ll figure it out.”

But I couldn’t figure it out. My body was screaming danger signals. Every time she gave me that answer, every time I thought about the long-distance reality ahead of us, my chest would tighten, my thoughts would spiral, and I would feel that familiar panic.

The trauma was running the show now. I wasn’t making rational decisions anymore; I was reacting from a wounded place, trying to protect myself from experiencing that same devastating loss again.

One night after dinner, we walked home and I tried again to talk with Zaira about life after Atlanta.

“What is going to happen to us when I move in six months?” I asked.

“We’ll make it work,” she answered, the same way she had answered a dozen times before.

When I pressed her to provide more details, she tried to change the subject.

“I’m going to New Mexico. Your business and all of your family are here in Georgia. How do you plan to make this work?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but we’ll make it work.”

I felt like she was not listening to me, so I raised my voice, my nervous system fully activated now: “How are you going to make it work?”

“I don’t know, Robert,” she said.

“That’s not a good answer, Zaira,” I replied, frustrated, as passersby on the sidewalk probably wondered what my problem was.

My problem was that I was terrified. My body was preparing for the inevitable. Every conversation about the future activated the same neural pathways that had been carved during my divorce. Distance equals abandonment. Ambition equals loneliness. Love plus career equals loss. These weren’t thoughts I was choosing—they were automatic responses encoded in my nervous system from the trauma I had experienced.

I didn’t understand then what I know now: that trauma creates a hypersensitivity to any situation that resembles the original wound. My nervous system couldn’t tell the difference between my ex-wife and Zaira, between Afghanistan and New Mexico, between then and now. It only knew that the pattern felt similar, and similar meant danger.

So I did what traumatized people do when they feel threatened: I abandoned the relationship before it could abandon me.

About a year into our relationship, I dumped her… over email.

Not my proudest moment.

Once again, I was alone. Dating wasn’t going anywhere. Most nights after class, I’d grab dinner at a local restaurant, eating and drinking by myself at the bar. Then I’d head back to my condo, half-heartedly do some homework, pour another drink, and watch TV with my dog until I fell asleep.

One night, boredom led me to Facebook, where I stumbled across an invitation to join the TomorrowWorld Couch Surfers group. Curious, I clicked. TomorrowWorld was a massive three-day EDM festival, and the group was made up of travelers planning to meet up, camp together, and share the whole experience.

Couch surfing is a process where hosts, offer up their couch to strangers to spend the night. Allowing the couch surfers to travel around the world, or visit places, for free.

I posted in the group that my couch was open to anyone who needed a place to crash before the festival.

I lived in a small one-bedroom studio. There were no locked doors or real separation between my bed and the couch. Whoever stayed over would basically be sharing my whole space.

It probably sounded a little crazy. But opening my home — and my heart — to strangers wasn’t new to me. That’s how I was raised. My parents, Vic and Dot, were always taking people in. We had foster kids coming and going my entire childhood. At one point, when I was a toddler, there were thirteen kids packed into our modest 2,200-square-foot house. Some had severe disabilities. Some stayed a few days. Some stayed years. A few never really left.

What my parents showed me, without ever preaching it, was simple: if someone needs help, you make room. So letting a stranger sleep on my couch didn’t feel like a big deal. It felt normal.

One of the group members messaged me saying they needed a place for the night.

A few hours later, Jesus rolled up to my condo on a Harley-Davidson Softail.

Actually, his name was Tom, but he sure as hell looked like Jesus. At least the Anglo-Saxon version of him I’d worshiped in grade school—the one in all the paintings with perfect hair and a gentle expression. Six-foot-two, shoulder-length wavy brown hair and a matching beard, fair skin, kind eyes. If you’d told me he’d just walked off the set of a biblical movie, I would have believed you.

I met Tom on the street outside my condo. He was standing there in jeans, a leather jacket, and riding boots, a worn backpack slung over his shoulder.

“Robert?” he asked in a Belgian accent.

“Yeah, that’s me. You must be Tom. Come in, come in.”

We walked inside and took the elevator up to my condo—the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Atlanta skyline.

“Nice place,” he said politely.

“Thanks. Can I get you something to drink? Water? Beer?”

“Water would be great. Long ride today.”

I grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and we sat down in the living room. My dog immediately went over to Tom and started sniffing him enthusiastically.

“How long have you been couch surfing?” He asked, settling into the conversation.

“Actually, you’re my first couch surfing host,” I admitted. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Ah, I’m honored to be your first guest! Don’t worry, I’m easy. Just need a place to sleep and maybe a shower.”

“How about you? How long have you been  couch surfing?”

Tom took a sip of water and smiled. “About a year now. All across America.”

“A year? Wow. That’s a long trip.”

“So what’s your story? How did you end up couch surfing for a year?”

Tom leaned back, his expression becoming more thoughtful. “Well, about a year ago, I was living in Belgium. Working a normal job. Corporate marketing. Good money, nice apartment, everything society says you’re supposed to want. But I was miserable, you know? Just completely dead inside. Every day the same. Wake up, go to work, come home, watch TV, sleep, repeat.”

I nodded. I understood that feeling more than he knew.

“So one day, I just decided—screw it. I’m going to sell everything and travel. I sold my apartment, my car, most of my possessions. Kept what fit in a backpack. And I bought a one-way ticket to America.”

“Just like that? No plan?”

“No plan,” he confirmed. “When I got to the states, I bought the motorcycle, and I’ve been on the road ever since.”

“That’s…” I searched for the right word. “That’s brave.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But really, I’m just out here enjoying life.”

I looked at this man who’d given up everything to be free, who’d traded security for experience, and I felt a pang of envy. I’d been stuck in my military career for eight years, and four years of military college before that. And where did it lead me, alone in Atlanta, divorced.

“Well, you’re welcome to stay as long as you need,” I said. “And tomorrow, we go to TomorrowWorld.”

The next day, we loaded up my Ranger and drove out to the festival grounds. Tom wore regular clothes for the drive, but he had his “festival outfit” packed in his backpack.

When we arrived and set up our tent in the Couch Surfers camping area, I met the rest of the group. About fifteen people from all over—a couple from Australia, two guys from Venezuela, a guy from Germany, another graduate student from Georgia Tech, and various others. Everyone was friendly, welcoming, excited.

As the sun began to set and the festival officially opened, Tom disappeared into the tent and emerged five minutes later transformed.

He was wearing a white flowing robe that went down to his ankles, with biker boots. His long hair and beard completed the look perfectly.

He looked exactly like Jesus Christ.

“What do you think?” he asked, striking a pose.

I burst out laughing. “You’re going to blow people’s minds.”

“That’s the idea,” he grinned.

We walked toward the festival grounds with our group. As we walked deeper into the festival, the spectacle overwhelmed me.

Massive stages rose out of the ground like temples to electronic music, each one covered in LED screens and elaborate set designs. Lasers cut through the night sky. Fire cannons shot flames fifty feet into the air in time with the bass drops. People dressed as blue Smurfs played hide and seek behind ten-foot-tall mushroom figurines. Tens of thousands of people danced, laughed, hugged, celebrated.

This is insane, I thought.

We walked across a bridge toward one of the main stages. The bridge was illuminated with thousands of LED lights that changed colors in waves—blue to purple to pink to green. Suspended above us were giant inflatable butterflies, glowing from within, their wings slowly flapping in the breeze.

Below the bridge, a lake reflected all the lights, creating a mirror image that doubled the magic. On the far shore, I could see a group of people dressed as Smurfs—fully body-painted blue—playing hide and seek behind enormous illuminated mushrooms that were at least ten feet tall.

I didn’t do drugs at that stage of my life—I was still military-minded, still following the rules even though I was on sabbatical for graduate school. But I didn’t have to do drugs. The scene itself was mind-altering. Reality felt optional.

As we walked past a group of people near the mushrooms, one of them did a double-take when they saw Tom.

“Yo! What’s up, Jesus!” a guy shouted, running over to give Tom a high-five.

“Blessings, my child,” Tom replied in a mock-serious voice, making the sign of the cross.

The guy cracked up and hugged him. “Dude, I love you. Can I get a picture?”

“Of course, my son.”

Maybe it was because Tom looked like Jesus. Maybe it was because most people were on drugs—MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, whatever. I’m not sure. But everyone was so incredibly friendly.

Really, the culture around that music festival was unlike anything I’d experienced in my life. So kind. So welcoming. So open.

I was in a dark place emotionally. The divorce was still fresh, the pain an open wound that hadn’t even begun to heal. I was lonely, lost, questioning everything about my life and my choices.

On top of all of that, I still suffered from the generational trauma associated with racism. It was clear that some girls didn’t want to date me or even give me attention because of the color of my skin, people refused to believe that I was Italian and Irish, the international Latino community at Georgia Tech pushed me away because I didn’t speak Spanish, I wasn’t black enough for the African American community, and I for most of the past decade I witnessed institutional racism in the military, most often being the only person of color in leadership roles. In my day to day life, I felt like I never fit in anywhere.

But there, at the music festival, I felt like everyone I met was immediately a friend, not just a stranger I’d met five minutes ago. People offered me water when I looked hot. Shared their snacks. Invited me to dance. Asked me how I was doing and actually listened to the answer. Hugged me like they’d known me for years.

After almost a decade in the military, moving around so often, stuck in rigid hierarchies where everyone was guarded and competitive, where showing vulnerability was seen as weakness—this group of EDM-loving, free-spirited festival-goers was the most welcomed I’d ever felt in my life.

It was heaven.

Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—the universe has a way of teaching us the lessons we need to learn, even when we’re too stubborn to learn them the first time.

After breaking up with Zaira, I spent six months trying to convince myself I’d made the right decision. Six months of soul-searching, of going to raves and music festivals, of throwing myself into graduate school.

I dated around, meeting a few girls who were perfectly nice but nothing at all like Zaira. No one made me smile the way she did. No one challenged me the way she did. None of them were Zaira.

And slowly—painfully slowly—I began to realize what a colossal, idiotic mistake I’d made.

I’d pushed away the best thing that had happened to me since the divorce because I was too scared to believe it could last. I’d chosen loneliness over the risk of love. I’d let my past dictate my future.

And I’d been miserable ever since.

It took me six months to work up the courage to reach out.

Finally, a few weeks before Christmas, I sent her a simple message:

Zaira, I know I don’t deserve a response. But if you’re willing, I’d really like to see you. To talk. To explain. I made a terrible mistake. Is there any chance we can meet up?

The next day we met for lunch. Zaira walked in right at noon, looking beautiful in jeans and a simple black top. She saw me and paused for just a moment before walking over to the booth where I was sitting.

“Hi,” she said, sliding into the seat across from me.

“Hi. Thank you for coming. I wasn’t sure you would.”

“I almost didn’t.”

I deserved that.

The server came by with two waters. We told him we needed more time, and then we were alone again. I took a deep breath and started talking.

“I was an idiot,” I began. “That’s the short version. The long version is… I was terrified. Of being hurt again. Of making the same mistakes. Of getting close to someone and then having it all fall apart like it did with my ex-wife.”

Zaira listened, her expression unreadable.

“When things were going so well with you,” I continued, “when I started falling in love with you, I panicked. I was afraid that we would end up rushing into marriage, and that scared me.”

“The truth is,” I said, my voice cracking slightly, “I’m still carrying so much pain from the divorce. And I took all of that pain and I let it destroy something beautiful with you.”

Tears were forming in my eyes now, and I didn’t try to hide them.

“You deserved so much better than a breakup email. I’m so, so sorry.”

Zaira’s expression softened slightly, but she didn’t speak yet.

“I know I hurt you,” I continued. “I know I broke your trust. And I know that might not be something you can forgive. But I’m asking anyway. I’m asking if there’s any chance—any chance at all—that you’d be willing to give me another shot. To let me prove that I can be the man you deserve.”

I reached across the table, my hand open, palm up.

She looked at my open hand for a long moment, then back up at my face.

“You really hurt me, Robert,” she said quietly.

“I know,” I said, tears in both of our eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m willing to try again,” she said. “But I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Next time you get scared, next time your demons start whispering that this won’t work, that I’m going to leave, that you need to protect yourself—I need you to talk to me. Tell me you’re scared. Don’t shut me out.”

“I promise,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I promise I’ll do better. I’ll be better.”

She smiled then—the first real smile I’d seen from her since she walked in.

“Okay then.”

We stayed at that gastropub for six hours. Talking, laughing, crying, processing everything that had happened over the past six months. The pain I’d been carrying. The work I’d been doing on myself. Her own fears about getting hurt again. What we both wanted from a relationship, from life, from the future.

When we finally left, the sun was setting and the restaurant was filling up with the dinner crowd. I walked her to her car, and before she got in her car, I pulled her into a hug.

“Thank you,” I whispered into her hair. “Thank you for giving me another chance.”

“Don’t make me regret it,” she said, but she was smiling.

“I won’t. I swear I won’t.”

And this time, I meant it.

“My cousin said this is really strong,” Zaira said as she unwrapped the little green gummy bear, holding it up to examine it in the fading sunlight. “So we should probably split it up.”

“Do you want some?” she asked, holding it out to me.

We were at Bonnaroo, the legendary three-day music festival in Tennessee—a sprawling temporary city of tents, art installations, and about 80,000 people who’d all come to lose themselves in music for a long weekend. It had been over a decade since I’d touched any type of illegal drug or substance. A full decade of being straight-edge military, of random drug tests and the weight of responsibility that came with wearing the uniform.

But I was in graduate school now, on a two-year sabbatical from the Army. The next drug test was still a year away. And I was at the festival with people I trusted—my girlfriend Zaira, and our two friends Molly and Kevin. Plus, I’d already been drinking, so I had a nice buzz going. The stars were coming out. The bass from distant stages pulsed through the ground like a heartbeat.

Why not, I thought.

“Sure,” I told her.

She carefully divided the gummy bear up like a surgeon performing a delicate operation. I got the head. Kevin got the feet. Zaira and Molly split the torso between them.

I looked at the little gummy bear head sitting in my palm—barely the size of a Flintstone vitamin. This little thing is supposed to get me high? I thought, skeptical. It seemed almost comically small.

Down the hatch. Washed down with a few sips of Corona as we enjoyed the last bit of golden hour at our campsite, the Tennessee sky turning shades of orange and purple above us.

We settled back into our camping chairs, letting the gummy bear work its way through our systems, when a guy in his twenties with a flannel shirt and a friendly smile wandered up to our campsite.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he said casually, as if he was about to ask us about the weather. “You guys need any molly or K?”

It was so matter-of-fact, so casual—like he was offering us a beer or asking if we wanted to buy a bottle of water. At Bonnaroo, drugs were as omnipresent as the music itself. All weekend, we’d watched our friends and fellow festival-goers partake in everything—substances I’d heard of during D.A.R.E. classes two decades earlier, and plenty I hadn’t.

“Nah, we’re good, man. Thanks though,” I said with a polite wave.

He nodded, completely unfazed. “Cool, cool. Have a great night!” And just like that, he moved on to the next campsite, probably making the same offer.

Bonnaroo was its own universe with its own rules—or lack thereof.

“Okay, where do you guys want to go first?” Molly asked, holding out the crumpled festival schedule, ready to move on from the drug dealer interlude.

“I want to see Lionel Richie,” I said confidently.

“That could be cool,” Molly said supportively.

“How about Lauryn Hill?” Zaira offered as a counter-proposal.

“Whatever you guys want to do,” Kevin said with a shrug, just happy to be there.

“How about Frank Ocean?” Molly added.

Me, “Zedd could be cool.”

I could see that no one was going to step up and make a decision—classic group paralysis. My military training kicked in automatically. Sometimes you just need someone to make the call.

“Alright, let’s start with Zedd, then Lionel Richie, then Frank Ocean, and close out the night with Kaskade at the main stage.”

Everyone shrugged in agreement. Good enough. A few minutes later, we were weaving our way through the festival grounds toward the first stage.

The bass pulsed through the ground, resonating in my chest as I stood among thousands of dancing festival-goers. Lasers cut through the night air, creating fractal patterns above the crowd that seemed to breathe and shift with the music.

As we danced under the stars, I was both intoxicated and fatigued from nearly forty-eight hours of nonstop celebration. My legs should have been tired. My body should have been screaming for rest. But I didn’t feel tired at all. Instead, euphoria took over, fueled by red bull, alcohol, the music, and the electrifying energy of the massive crowd.

Gradually, I began to feel a subtle change moving through my body. It started as a gentle tingle in my hands and feet—like the pins-and-needles feeling when circulation returns, but pleasant somehow. Then it spread inward toward my core, wave by wave, until my entire body hummed.

As we walked through the crowd toward the next stage, I began to feel weightless. I felt as if I needed to consciously force my feet down to the ground to counteract their desire to float into the air. It was as if gravity had loosened its grip on me, and I might just drift away if someone gave me a gentle push. The world around me started to blur and soften at the edges.

Oh, I thought with sudden clarity. That’s what the gummy bear does.

Music has always had a special relationship with psychedelics. From the ancient icaros, the healing songs of indigenous shamans, to the meandering guitar riffs that defined the Grateful Dead’s legendary concerts, to the modern natural tribal ambient sounds of artists like East Forest, music becomes something else entirely when you’re on hallucinogenic substances.

That night, my soundtrack alternated between the soulful R&B of Lionel Richie and Frank Ocean to the house and electronic beats of Zedd and Kaskade, with a few other artists mixed in. Each genre opened different doorways in my mind.

Eventually, we ended up back at the main stage where Kaskade was playing. Progressive house music flowed through me as the bass built up and dropped in deep hits that caused the crowd to erupt in orgasmic pleasure.

We’d lost Molly and Kevin somewhere between Lionel and Frank. Now it was just me and Zaira. I was feeling high as fuck and good—really good. She held me by the hand, pulling me through the crowd closer to the stage, navigating the sea of bodies.

As the music pulsed through the crowd, it wasn’t just a sound anymore. It was a living, breathing force that connected everyone around me, an invisible web.

I looked at Zaira—her hair catching the stage lights, her joyful smile, the way she moved. As she pulled me forward, I looked down at our intertwined hands.

Which hand is mine? I thought, genuinely confused. I couldn’t distinguish where I ended and she began.

I looked up at her face. Is that me? Am I Robert or am I Zaira?

The question wasn’t philosophical—it was literal. I had genuine difficulty distinguishing which one of us I was.

As we found a spot closer to the stage and I wrapped my arms around her from behind, I began to dissolve completely. I was no longer just Robert. I was Robert and Zaira, both of us, fully and completely.

And as I continued to fall deeper into the music and the dance-like trance, I dissolved further still.

Who was I in this crowd?

I looked at a shirtless man with sunglasses and a trucker hat, hands raised to the sky in pure ecstasy. Was I him?

A young woman with flower pasties covering her breats, face painted with more flowers, wrists full of beaded bracelets, perched on her boyfriend’s shoulders, screaming with joy. Was I her? Was I the DJ on stage, looking out at this crowd?

Yes. I was all of them. All at once. I contained multitudes.

It felt as though I had tapped into something infinite and universal. I transcended time and space. I was no longer just one person in a crowd. I was part of something much larger, something that encompassed everyone and everything, everywhere, all at once.

I even felt connected to the trees at the edge of the field, the earth beneath my feet, and the stars overhead. They all seemed to pulse with the same mystic energy. I felt the earth, the air, and the crowd just as clearly as if they were physical extensions of my own arms or legs. I lost my individual sense of identity.

As my consciousness expanded, my sense of time began to unravel. What once felt like fleeting moments stretched out, expanding until each second seemed to last for hours, then years, then centuries. It became impossible to discern where one moment ended and the next began. It was as if I had been plucked from the normal flow of time and placed in a space where time was no longer linear—where past, present, and future blurred together into a single, continuous experience.

It was surreal, dreamlike.

I looked at Zaira, her face glowing in the shifting lights of the stage, and felt a connection deeper than any I’d known. In that instant, visions of our future—a home, children, a lifetime of growth and love, as well as heartbreak and suffering—flashed before me with absolute clarity. I could feel our future in my heart, just as clearly as I remember the comforting feeling of eating bacon and eggs for breakfast that day.

In what felt like a few heartbeats, I lived our entire lives together. My life from birth to death. Her life from birth to death. All the love, the pain, the joy, the sorrow—all of it. Living each lifetime thousands upon thousands of times over and over again, like a film reel stuck on repeat but somehow never boring, always beautiful.

Not only did I feel our lives, but I felt the entire lives of others as well—not as an observer watching from outside, but as if I had lived every moment as my own. All of their pain and suffering, their happiness and joys, became mine. The young mother worrying about her kids back home. The college kid experiencing his first festival. The middle-aged couple who’d been coming to Bonnaroo for a decade. I was all of them, simultaneously.

Eventually, slowly, I began to slip back into my individual consciousness. Like waking from a dream but in reverse—becoming smaller, more contained, more singular.

I looked at my watch. Nearly 1 AM. The night’s performances would be winding down soon.

“We should head back to camp to beat the crowd,” I shouted at Zaira, barely audible over the music.

She nodded, and we walked back to our campsite—an easy walk just on the other side of the tree line, close enough to hear everything but far enough to have some peace. I was still feeling euphoric, sweaty, physically exhausted but mentally electric.

We settled into our camping chairs. I opened one more beer, and we shared some fruit and beef jerky. Then we crawled into our tent, ready to call it a night. The music was still playing, bass still thundering through the ground and into our bodies.

I checked the time, “They should be finishing soon,” I said.

That’s when we heard Kaskade’s voice boom across the festival grounds: “Bonnaroo! Who’s having a good time!” The crowd erupted in a roar. Lasers, lights, and flames were still visible, filtering through the tree line like a distant war being waged in celebration.

“We’re going to play until the sun comes up!”

I looked at Zaira in shock. She looked back at me with wide eyes.

“Should we go back?” she asked.

I was also physically exhausted. My body had been dancing for hours. My feet ached. My throat was dry from shouting and singing.

“I think I’m done,” I said, surprising myself with the admission.

We crawled into our tent and zipped it shut, creating our own little world within the larger world. But the music and the alcohol made sleep restless. I tossed and turned for the next five hours in a trance-like state—not quite asleep, not quite awake, the effects of the gummy bear still dancing through my neural pathways.

During that liminal time between sleep and waking, I felt a profound connection to the consciousness of the physical world itself. The forest surrounding the festival. The trees rooted deep in Tennessee soil. The soil itself. Even the Earth as a whole—all of it seemed to pulse with awareness, with aliveness.

My perception expanded to encompass the tiniest atoms vibrating in air and the vast expanse of the cosmos spinning overhead. In that moment, I perceived existence across all of time—past, present, and future melded into a singular experience. I felt as though I had become the universe in its entirety, catching a glimpse of the true nature of existence.

It was beautiful.

As the night progressed toward dawn, I gradually returned to my ordinary state of consciousness. The transition wasn’t easy. At times I felt an alluring pull to remain in that expanded state, to stay dissolved in the cosmic everything, to die and leave my body behind.

Ultimately, it was my connection with Zaira that anchored me to reality. I could feel her beside me in the tent—a physical and spiritual tether to our shared existence. The desire to be there for her, to live out the marriage and long life that I knew we were destined to share. This mixture of love and purpose became the gravitational force that drew me back to my human form, back to being just Robert instead of God.

As dawn broke and the music finally faded, I fell asleep.

Eventually we woke up—stiff, dehydrated, covered in a thin layer of festival dust. We packed up our tent and camping gear, loaded everything into the car, and returned to our normal lives.

But that moment, that experience, stuck with me forever.

For years afterward, I would ask myself: What the fuck was that?

It took me a long time to process and integrate my first mystical experience.

For days after the music festival, I felt like I was living in a haze, suspended between worlds. I wasn’t quite sure if the reality I was experiencing was actually real or some elaborate dream I’d constructed. Colors seemed more vibrant, and every time I looked at Zaira, I felt echoes of those infinite lifetimes we’d lived together, like memories that shouldn’t exist yet somehow did.

I kept touching things—the steering wheel of my car, the keyboard at my desk, my dog’s fur, just to confirm they were real.

Was I real? Or was I some universal mind temporarily embodied as Robert?

I searched online, trying to understand what kind of drug could have caused my experience.

“What drug effects last 12 hours?” I asked Google in the privacy of my condo. It returned “LSD.” “Lasting effects of psychedelics.” “Ego death experience.” “Feelings of oneness.” “Time distortion.”

The search results led me down rabbit holes of terminology I didn’t understand yet—set and setting, integration, unity consciousness, mystical experiences.

The next time I saw Molly, I asked her, “Hey, so that gummy bear at Bonnaroo… did that feel like normal THC to you?”

“I mean, it was strong,” she said. “Why?”

“I just… I had a really intense experience. Like, really intense.”

“Yeah, there was definitely something else in there,” she said thoughtfully.

“Dude, I felt like I was one with the universe,” I told her, the words tumbling out. “Like I wasn’t Robert anymore. I was everyone. Everything. I lived multiple lifetimes. I saw the entire arc of existence. It was—”

“Sounds like you had a really good time,” she said with a laugh.

But she didn’t get it. Not really.

She and Kevin and even Zaira had enjoyed the experience—they’d felt good, danced, connected with the music. But it hadn’t hit them the way it hit me. They’d gotten high. I’d experienced something else entirely. Something that felt less like intoxication and more like… revelation.

What I would come to learn later—much later, after years of study and experience—was the concept of set and setting, famously coined by psychedelic researcher Timothy Leary in the 1960s.

Set refers to your mindset going into the experience—your expectations, emotional state, beliefs, traumas, hopes, fears, as well as your own physiology, which can affect how your body processes drugs.

Setting refers to your physical and social environment—where you are, who you’re with, what’s happening around you, the music, the atmosphere, the safety or danger of the space.

Psychedelic medicines affect us all differently based on these factors. The same substance at the same dose can produce radically different experiences depending on set and setting.

For me that night at Bonnaroo, everything aligned in a way that created the perfect conditions for a mystical experience:

My set: I was in a vulnerable emotional place, newly back together with Zaira, questioning everything about my life and my beliefs. My divorce wounds were still fresh. I was searching for meaning after years of military service that had shown me death and suffering without offering much in the way of spiritual understanding. I was open, hungry for something beyond the material world, even if I didn’t consciously know it. I’d also been mixing alcohol and energy drinks with whatever was in that gummy bear. I had an incredibly low tolerance—the last time I’d consumed any drug was smoking weed over a decade earlier in high school. I was also incredibly sensitive to psychedelics.

My setting: I was surrounded by friends I trusted, at a music festival designed to be a sacred space of joy and connection. The music—particularly the electronic music with its repetitive, trance-inducing beats—acted as a sonic guide. The crowd of thousands, all experiencing altered states together, created a collective energy field. The visual spectacle of lights, lasers, and pyrotechnics primed my brain for the extraordinary.

And then there was the music playing throughout the night as I lay in that tent, keeping me tossing and turning in a dreamlike liminal state where the boundary between waking and sleeping dissolved. My consciousness never fully came back down—it just hovered in that expanded space for hours.

All of that combined to create a spiritual experience that I don’t think I could ever fully reproduce, even if I tried.

It was an experience that shook every foundational principle I thought I knew.

In the days and weeks that followed, I found myself asking questions I’d never seriously considered before:

What is time, really? If I experienced multiple lifetimes simultaneously, if past and future felt equally present, what does that say about the nature of temporal reality?

What is God? If I felt divine consciousness within myself, if I experienced myself as the creator and the created, what does that say about God? 

What is identity? If I dissolved into everything and everyone, if I couldn’t distinguish between Robert and Zaira and the crowd and the universe, then what does it mean to be “me”? Where do I actually end and the world begin?

What happens when we die? If consciousness can expand beyond the body, if I experienced myself as eternal and infinite, does death even exist in the way we think it does?

What is heaven? If I experienced paradise, bliss, divine love, and perfect unity with all of existence while still alive in a tent in Tennessee, then what are we waiting for? Why do we think heaven is somewhere else, sometime later?

What is real? If this profound spiritual experience can be triggered by a molecule interacting with receptors in my brain, does that make it less real? Or does it reveal that “reality” is far more malleable and mysterious than we’ve been taught?

These questions haunted me. Excited me. Terrified me.

And since I was still in the Army—still subject to drug testing, still living under the weight of military regulations and expectations—I couldn’t really talk openly about the experience. I couldn’t tell my commanders, “Hey, I took an edible at a music festival and experienced ego death and now I’m questioning the entire nature of reality.”

That wouldn’t have gone well.

I also didn’t know anything about psychedelics at the time. I didn’t know there was a whole field of research, centuries of indigenous wisdom, and communities of people who’d had similar experiences. I thought I was alone in this, possibly crazy, definitely confused.

So I had to process and integrate those awakenings by myself, in silence, in the privacy of my own mind.

Although I couldn’t really explain why at first, after that experience I had greater confidence and clarity about my relationship with Zaira.

The doubts and fears that had plagued me before—Is this moving too fast? Will the Army ruin this relationship like it did my marriage? Am I capable of love?—those anxieties simply… disappeared.

Because I had already witnessed our shared life. Multiple times over. In that expanded state, I’d seen us grow old together, raise children together, face challenges together, love each other through everything. It wasn’t hope or wishful thinking—it felt like memory, like certainty.

The fear evaporated because I’d already lived the answer.

My worries and anxiety about politics, my career, the future of the world—all of that melted away too. Because it became clear, in a way I can’t fully articulate, that everything was by perfect design. Not in a deterministic “everything happens for a reason” platitude kind of way, but in a deeper sense: that the universe was unfolding exactly as it should, that chaos and order were dancing together in perfect harmony, that even suffering had its place in the grand design.

I felt more empowered to express myself authentically. The masks I’d been wearing my whole life—the good soldier, the successful student, the competent commander, the person who always had it together—those masks felt less necessary. I could just be Robert, flawed and searching and imperfect, and that was enough.

Previous concepts and ideas I’d had about religion and spirituality all of a sudden seemed trivial, like children’s stories I’d outgrown. Because I had felt the loving spirit of God—or whatever you want to call that infinite consciousness, that universal mind—inside myself more fully than I’d ever felt in any church, any prayer, any scripture.

The divine wasn’t out there. It was in here. It was me. It was everything.

Of course, that intensity faded. Within a few weeks, I was back to being regular Robert—worried about my helicopter design capstone, stressed about the Black Lives Matter movement, frustrated by Atlanta traffic, annoyed by small inconveniences. The profound insights dimmed, became harder to access, felt more like memories than lived reality.

And although I still occasionally struggle with all my human shortcomings—impatience, fear, ego, attachment—that enlightenment, that glimpse beyond the veil, is still something I can return to when I quiet my mind in deep meditation and reflection.

It’s like having visited a foreign country. You can’t stay there permanently; you have to return to your regular life. But you carry the memory of that place with you. You know it exists. You know what’s possible. And that knowledge changes you, even after you’ve come home.

My mystical experience at Bonnaroo upended everything I thought I knew about reality. In those profound hours of expanded consciousness, I glimpsed something that my ordinary mind struggled to comprehend—and still does. When I was one with the Universal Mind, I possessed infinite knowledge and wisdom. But to return to human form, to fit back into the constraints of my individual consciousness, I had to compress, simplify, and approximate. I had to distill the infinite into something a finite brain could hold.

And that’s when I realized the most humbling truth of all: everything I thought I knew—everything anyone has ever claimed to know with certainty—is merely a model, an approximation, a theory. All flawed in some way. None as complete as the whole.

Imagine you and I are lost deep in the woods, miles from civilization, without smartphones or GPS to guide us. Desperate, you ask if I have anything that could help us find our way back. I confidently reply, “Yes, I have a map!” You breathe a sigh of relief as I reach into my backpack and produce… a globe, a small spherical model of Earth.

You stare at it, perplexed. “What are we supposed to do with this?”

“Well, it’s a map of Earth, and we’re on Earth, so it should help, right?”

It’s obvious to you that this globe, while technically a map, is completely impractical for our situation. Navigating out of dense woods with a globe would be nearly impossible.

So you ask again, “Do you have anything else?”

This time, I pull out a topographical map—a detailed flat representation of the terrain, complete with markings for elevation, roads, rivers, and vegetation. Now this seems useful! We identify a nearby mountain range, use the rising sun to orient ourselves, and pinpoint the direction we need to go.

But as we begin our trek, we quickly realize the map, while helpful, isn’t perfect. The green area indicating vegetation turns out to be an impenetrable thicket of thorny bushes. The blue line representing a river is actually a raging torrent, impossible to cross safely. And those gentle contour lines? They reveal themselves as sheer, jagged cliffs blocking our path.

The map, though informative, didn’t fully prepare us for the harsh realities of the terrain.

In my 25 years in the military, I’ve been lost in the wilderness more times than I can count—from the swamps of Alabama to the barren deserts of Iraq to the perilous mountain passes of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that all maps have their limits.

Maps are undoubtedly useful, but even the most meticulously crafted maps are wrong to some degree. They are, by their very nature, simplified representations of reality. They distort certain information to make other details clearer, and they inevitably leave out nuances.

We can create increasingly detailed maps, but as they become more detailed, they also become more unwieldy. Google Maps, perhaps the most detailed comprehensive map of Earth we have today, is estimated to contain around 50 petabytes of data. If you printed it out, the map would cover approximately 46 square miles—larger than 22,000 football fields. Yet despite its staggering detail, Google Maps still has errors and omissions. Like all maps, it’s a snapshot in time that doesn’t account for the ever-changing dynamics of the world.

A truly accurate map would need to be as large as the planet itself and as detailed as reality—but such a map would be completely impractical and defeat the purpose of a map, which is to provide a simplified, manageable representation of the world.

Despite their imperfections, maps remain incredibly useful tools. A globe gives us a general understanding of Earth’s layout. A topographical map offers more specific detail about terrain. And Google Earth provides an even more detailed view of the landscape. But in the end, all maps are just models—approximations of our physical world.

Theories function in much the same way as maps. Just as a map is a simplified representation of Earth, a theory is a simplified model of some aspect of the universe. The universe is infinitely complex, far beyond our full comprehension, so we create theories—mental models that help us understand, explain, and predict phenomena.

These theories include everything from the scientific laws we hold dear, to the religious beliefs that guide billions of people, to the everyday assumptions we make about how the world works. Some of these theories may seem irrefutable, foundational to the universe. But I hate to break the news to you: like maps, they are all flawed in some way. They are incredibly useful, often necessary for us to get through our daily lives, but they are not perfect representations of reality.

Consider the law of gravity. We think of it as an unchangeable truth, a fundamental aspect of our universe. Yet Newton’s law of gravitation is actually a theory—a model we’ve created to explain the behavior of objects in our universe. It’s an incredibly useful theory that has allowed us to accomplish incredible feats, like building skyscrapers and exploring space. But it’s not a flawless representation of reality.

Quantum mechanics, black holes, high-energy systems, extreme gravitational fields, the early phase of our universe after the Big Bang—these are all fields of physics where traditional laws of gravity break down. In these extreme cases, scientists have developed new theories, such as general relativity and quantum gravity, to account for phenomena that traditional gravity cannot explain.

Gravity is a simplified model of something far more complex that humans will never be able to fully explain.

But theories aren’t confined to the realm of science.

The concept of family, for instance, is also a theory—a mental construct we use to understand certain human relationships. What constitutes a family varies widely across cultures and throughout history. I was adopted as a toddler, and today I have connections with both my adoptive and biological families. My understanding of family is expansive: I have adoptive parents, biological parents, godparents, adopted siblings, biological siblings, step-siblings, and a mix of relationships that defy traditional categories. When friends talk about the importance of family, I often smile because my experience of family is so varied and complex. My concept of family diverges significantly from conventional concepts.

Religion, too, consists of theories about the nature of existence, morality, and our place in the cosmos. These theories offer frameworks for addressing life’s big questions and guiding behavior within complex social environments.

Even language is a theoretical framework. The very words you’re reading right now are part of a system of symbols and rules we’ve collectively agreed upon to convey meaning. Similarly, concepts like society, democracy, and individual identity are all theoretical constructs—mental models that help us make sense of our intricate social world.

And what about mathematics? Often considered the purest and most certain form of knowledge. Numbers, equations, geometric shapes—these are abstract concepts we’ve developed to model and manipulate quantities and relationships in the world around us. While incredibly powerful, mathematics is not reality itself, but rather a language we use to describe and predict aspects of reality.

The history of numbers itself illustrates how our theoretical constructs evolve over time. The concept of zero, now fundamental to our number system, didn’t emerge until about 628 A.D. when it began appearing in Indian texts. Similarly, the concept of negative numbers was once considered absurd and impractical. It wasn’t until the Chinese Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220) that we began to add and subtract negative numbers. Even more recently, in the 15th century, mathematicians introduced imaginary numbers, with the imaginary unit ‘i’ defined as the square root of -1.

It was René Descartes who, in the 16th century, coined the term “imaginary” when describing these negative square roots. While he is most often remembered for his first principle in philosophy—”Cogito, ergo sum,” or “I think, therefore I am”—it is perhaps his contribution to imaginary number theory that has most shaped our understanding of the universe.

Even time itself, that seemingly inescapable flow from past to future, is a theoretical construct. As we will explore later, our everyday understanding of time as a linear progression is an illusion—a useful model our minds create to navigate our experiences, but not an accurate representation of the true nature of reality.

So why do we create these theories? The answer lies in the incredible complexity of the universe we inhabit. Reality, in its fullest sense, is infinitely complex—far beyond the capacity of our small brains to fully comprehend.

Our brains, remarkable as they are, are limited in their processing power. We simply cannot take in and make sense of all the information available to us at any given moment. Theories are our mind’s way of simplifying this overwhelming complexity into manageable chunks. They are mental shortcuts, simplified models that allow us to navigate the world without being paralyzed by its complexity.

When we see an object fall, we don’t need to calculate all the forces acting upon it—our internalized theory of gravity allows us to predict its path and react accordingly. When we interact with others, we don’t need to reassess the nature of human relationships from first principles every time.

These theoretical frameworks are incredibly useful. They allow us to make predictions about what will happen in various situations. However, the very usefulness of these theories can sometimes lead us astray. Because they work so well in many situations, we can fall into the trap of mistaking our theories for absolute truth. We may forget that they are simplified models, not perfect representations of reality.

The key, then, is not to seek theories that are universally and eternally true—such theories are beyond our reach as finite beings in an infinite universe. Instead, the measure of a good theory is its usefulness. How well does it help us predict and navigate the world around us? How effectively does it help us achieve our goals and improve our lives?

The bottom line is that there are no universal, unchanging truths. I’m sorry to my Christian friends, my Republican family, my Dad, and other fundamentalists who believe their way is the one and only way. The best we can hope for is to develop theories that are increasingly useful, that help us make better sense of our world and make more accurate predictions about what will happen in various situations.

However, this view doesn’t mean we should abandon our current theories or treat all ideas as equally valid. Some theories are demonstrably more useful than others in helping us navigate reality.

Which brings us to the theory presented in this book—the concept of the Universal Mind, the philosophical framework that guides my faith and teachings at Heartspace Church. I don’t claim that this is the ultimate theory or the final word. Like all theories, it is a model, a way of looking at the world that may or may not resonate with your experience.

What I offer is a framework for understanding consciousness, identity, and our place in the universe. It’s a theory that challenges many of our common assumptions about the nature of reality, but one that I believe can be profoundly useful in navigating life’s challenges and finding deeper meaning and fulfillment.

To fully understand the Universal Mind, I had to realize that there are three fundamental illusions that most of us use to navigate this world: the illusion of individuality, the illusion of time, and the illusion of free will. They’re necessary constructs, useful fictions that allow us to function in our daily lives. But they are fictions nonetheless—and recognizing them as such opens the door to a profoundly different way of experiencing reality.

The first of the great illusions is the illusion of identity.

Have you ever paused to truly contemplate your identity? When you think of who you are as an individual, what comes to mind? Is it your physical form—your hands, your arms, your hair? Perhaps you consider your clothes, or if you’re near-sighted like me, your glasses or contact lenses? Or does your sense of self extend beyond your physical body, encompassing your job, your family, your home, and other aspects of your life?

Let’s break down this concept of identity, beginning with the most tangible aspect: our physical body.

Generally, when we think of ourselves as individuals, we think about our body. It seems straightforward enough—this body is me, and I am this body. But even this apparently simple concept becomes murky upon closer examination.

Consider your body for a moment. Is it made up solely of the living cells created from your DNA? If so, what about the parts of your body that aren’t living, like your hair’s split ends or your nails? We trim and cut these parts without much concern, yet the thought of cutting off a finger would be an entirely different matter. This simple observation already begins to blur the lines of what we consider to be “us” and what parts we are willing to discard or keep.

The complexity deepens when we consider the dynamic nature of our physical form. Our bodies are not static entities but constantly changing systems. As we process energy through daily activities, matter and energy flow in and through us ceaselessly. In fact, the atoms and molecules that compose our bodies will completely change multiple times throughout our lives. By the time you finish reading this very sentence, at least some of the molecules in your body will have changed as you breathe new ones in and old ones out.

This constant flux challenges our notion of a fixed, unchanging physical identity. If the very matter that composes us is in constant transition, what does that mean for our sense of self?

But the story of our physical identity becomes even more intriguing when we consider the microbiome—the vast community of microorganisms that call our body home. Prepare to be amazed: there are approximately 39 trillion microbes living in and on our bodies. To put this into perspective, there are just as many bacteria, fungi, and viruses coexisting with us as there are human cells. As a proportion of our body mass, these tiny “invaders” make up about 1-3 percent of our weight.

You mean to tell me that I could be six pounds lighter if it weren’t for all these pesky bacteria and fungi living in me? Yep.

But these microorganisms aren’t just hitchhikers. They play crucial roles in our bodily functions, residing in our gut, up our noses, in our armpits, on our skin, and throughout our body. They aid in digestion, bolster our immune system, and even influence our mood and behavior. Interestingly, people living together in the same household tend to have similar microbes, not just because of the food they eat, but also due to shared exposure to the air, furniture, and surroundings that these microbes inhabit.

So let’s take a moment to truly absorb this: the human body—your body—the individual that you think of when you think of “you,” is actually a complex ecosystem. It’s not just your human DNA and organic matter, but also a thriving colony of other creatures and creations. Like all cell-based life, these microbes have their own unique DNA. They are living organisms in their own right, yet they are an integral part of you. In some ways, you are “Mother Earth” for 39 trillion life forms.

This realization prompts a profound question: where does the boundary of the individual begin and end? If our bodies are not solely “ours” but shared habitats for trillions of other organisms, how does this affect our understanding of our physical identity?

As we grapple with these questions, we find ourselves drawn to the nervous system. Think about it: we don’t lose sleep over a haircut because our nervous system ends at the hair root. Similarly, the nervous system generally aligns with the boundary just below our skin. Any severe damage to the nervous system, like losing a limb, feels like losing a part of ourselves.

This alignment between our sense of self and our nervous system is no coincidence. In fact, our sense of individuality can be understood as an evolutionary protective measure of our nervous system. Our sense of self extends to where our nervous system’s pain receptors are located. This makes perfect sense from a survival standpoint—we need to be acutely aware of and protective of the parts of us that can feel pain and potential damage.

This connection between our nervous system and our sense of self opens up fascinating possibilities. What would happen if we had the ability to extend that nervous system? Imagine if we could graft a pair of wings onto our back or fins onto our feet. Or perhaps, in a future melding of man and machine, we could extend our nervous system and pain receptors into a robotic body, multiplying our strength by multiple orders of magnitude. Our sense of identity would hypothetically change to include these new features once our nervous system was rewired to accept them.

In the future, we might extend our nervous system even further—into digital realms. Imagine connecting your consciousness directly to Instagram, the worldwide web, or yes, even the Matrix. You could argue this is already happening through our phones, but the bandwidth is limited. Data flows from screen to eye, from fingertip to touchscreen. A direct neural interface would increase that flow by orders of magnitude—thoughts transmitted instantaneously, information absorbed without the bottleneck of our senses.

Just imagine how our consciousness and sense of self will transform when our nervous system merges with computer systems. How does a computer perceive time? Does it experience feelings? Consciousness? Probably vastly different from how we do—and that difference will reshape our own perceptions.

This may sound like science fiction, perhaps even frightening, but I believe it’s inevitable.

But you don’t need advanced technology to experience the dissolution of these boundaries. Sometimes, events occur that temporarily alter or soften the rigid borders of our nervous system, offering us glimpses beyond the illusion of individuality. Strokes, for instance, can dramatically change a person’s experience of the boundaries between self and world. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who experienced a severe stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain, described feeling a profound sense of peace and oneness with the universe as her left hemisphere shut down. Near-death experiences often produce similar reports—people describing their consciousness expanding beyond their physical body, feeling connected to everything around them.

Psychedelic substances can produce similar effects by temporarily softening the rigid boundaries maintained by our nervous system. Compounds like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT appear to quiet the brain’s default mode network—the neural circuitry responsible for maintaining our sense of separate self. When this network quiets, the boundaries that normally define “me” versus “not me” become permeable. Users feel themselves merging with their surroundings, with other people, with the universe itself. This is precisely what happened to me at Bonnaroo—the rigid boundary maintained by my nervous system softened, and I experienced directly what had always been true: that my individuality was a useful fiction, and underneath it, I was everything.

As we explore the concept of identity, we begin to see that our sense of an individual unified consciousness is also the sum of many collective consciousnesses working in harmony. The left and right hemispheres of our brain, for instance, have distinct capabilities and even separate awarenesses, as revealed by split-brain studies conducted by Dr. Roger Sperry in the 1960s.

Sperry’s research on patients who had undergone corpus callosotomy—severing the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres—revealed something astonishing: when the connection between the brain’s hemispheres was severed, it appeared as though two separate streams of consciousness emerged. When an object was shown only to the left visual field (processed by the right hemisphere), patients could not name it verbally (a function typically controlled by the left hemisphere). However, they could identify the object by selecting it with their left hand (controlled by the right hemisphere).

These findings led to the idea that perhaps we all have two consciousnesses, one for each half of our brain, but because they share so much information and the bandwidth between them is so high, it’s impossible for us to recognize these distinct consciousnesses within our skull under normal circumstances.

But why stop at two? Could each lobe of the brain, each wrinkle of nerves and memories, each group of neurons and synapses be its own consciousness if we were able to somehow divide and separate the neurons of our brain?

Recent research increasingly suggests that this might indeed be the case. What we perceive as our singular consciousness might actually be the collective consciousness of all the different parts of our brain and nervous system. The amount of information passed through these individual systems is so high and fast that to us, the collective sum of all these different consciousnesses feels like one unified consciousness.

It’s like a symphony orchestra—each instrument plays its own part, but together they create a harmonious whole that we perceive as a single piece of music.

Similarly, our minds can be understood as a collaboration between different levels of awareness: the conscious mind, capable of rational thought and decision-making; the subconscious mind, processing emotions, memories, and intuitions; and the unconscious mind, governing bodily functions and instinctive responses. Each of these “minds” has its own form of awareness and functionality, yet we perceive them as a single, cohesive self.

This illusion of unity allows us to function effectively in the world, making decisions and navigating complex situations without being overwhelmed by the multitude of processes occurring within us.

Just as we are composed of multiple consciousnesses, we are also part of larger collective consciousnesses. Consider a simple example from daily life. When my wife and I wake up, we immediately and instinctively enter a routine. I wake up my daughters and get them dressed for school while she showers. Then we handover and she does the girls’ hair, and she prepares them breakfast while I shower. Finally, I brush their teeth and take them to school. We do this routine instinctively, without any direct communication between us. We each understand our role in the children’s morning routine.

In this simple example, we have developed a kind of shared consciousness around childcare. This concept extends further in long-term relationships. If you’ve been married for a long time, you’ve likely experienced countless ways in which you and your spouse instinctively become part of a shared consciousness. While you remain distinct individuals, you also become part of a new collective consciousness made up of both spouses.

This is why grieving the loss of a spouse can feel like losing a part of yourself. Because when you’re part of a collective consciousness, you actually do lose a part of yourself when that collective is disrupted, much like a patient who’s lost a limb.

The example of a couple as part of a collective consciousness might seem like a stretch, and in many ways it is, because the bandwidth of information exchange between two people is relatively low compared to the information flow within a single brain. You can talk back and forth to each other all day long, for decades, and the information shared between the two of you would never even come close to the information shared between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

However, advances in information technology are beginning to come close to replicating this level of information exchange. The internet, social media, and instant global communication are creating new forms of collective consciousness on a scale never before seen in human history. We’re increasingly becoming part of a global brain, sharing information, ideas, and experiences at an unprecedented rate.

Imagine for a moment, if our sense of self did not end at the edge of our nervous system. Where would it end? Would it extend to the objects closest to us that we are touching, the chair we sit on, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe? Or perhaps it would reach further, encompassing the people and places we influence—our loved ones, our workplaces, our communities.

What if our sense of self had no definitive boundary at all? Maybe, just maybe, you are not who you think you are. Maybe you are something profoundly greater.

My experiences with the Universal Mind began to quietly unravel something I had always taken for granted: the idea that I had free will.

Ever since Catholic elementary school, I believed that I had free will—the ability to choose good versus evil, and to shape my own destiny. I also believed that randomness was proof of it.

Randomness exists in everyday life, and I used to think that if you traced reality all the way back to the beginning of the universe, randomness is what led to the non-homogenous universe we live in today. Without randomness, I imagined the universe would be something like a perfect lattice: space filled with evenly spaced matter and energy. My theory was that randomness led to atoms combining, stars forming, planets and solar systems emerging, evolution unfolding, and eventually human life. Randomness, I argued, was proof of free will—free will woven into every level of the universe.

In that mystical state, however, I entered a place of deep oneness where the boundary between “me” and everything else disappeared. Time collapsed. I didn’t feel like I was moving forward through life moment by moment. Instead, I realized that my entire life—from birth to death—already existed all at once, like a completed story I was simply witnessing.

And it wasn’t just my life.

I had lived my wife Zaira’s life. My children’s lives. Every human life that has ever existed, and every life that will ever exist. Not once, but endlessly. As if my soul had walked every path, over and over, an infinite number of times.

That experience challenged my beliefs. Because if the same lives keep unfolding the same way each time… what does that say about free will?

If every choice, every heartbreak, every success, every relationship is already written into the structure of reality, then are we actually choosing anything at all? Or are we simply playing out a script that was set in motion long before we arrived?

And if free will is an illusion, then what happens to everything we build our ethics and spirituality on? What does “good” or “evil” even mean? Do we go to heaven or hell depending on the choices we make, or is there even a heaven and hell at all?

As I started exploring these questions for myself, I realized something humbling: people have been wrestling with free will for thousands of years. Long before brain scans and psychology studies, human beings were already sensing that something about “choice” might not be as simple as it seems.

Early philosophical works questioning free will go all the way back to ancient Greece. In the 5th century BC, the philosopher Leucippus proposed that everything happens for a reason and by necessity. Nothing simply appears out of nowhere. Every event has a cause. His student, Democritus, expanded on this idea and imagined a universe made of atoms moving according to natural laws. In that picture of reality, everything unfolds like falling dominoes. Once the first tile tips, the rest follow. There isn’t really room for freedom in the way we normally think about it—only cause and effect.

Centuries later, St. Augustine wrestled with this question from a spiritual perspective: if God already knows everything that will happen, how could we truly be free to choose otherwise? That debate carried on from the medieval period through the Enlightenment, with thinkers like Spinoza arguing that the universe is completely deterministic and that free will is more illusion than reality.

When I first read these ideas, they sounded similar to what I had experienced at the music festival. It was comforting and unsettling at the same time.

Then modern science began echoing those same questions.

In the 1980s, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet ran a set of experiments that quietly shook the foundations of how we think about decision-making. He asked participants to perform a simple task—press a button whenever they felt like it—while monitoring their brain activity. What he found surprised everyone. The brain showed signs of initiating the decision before the person was consciously aware of choosing. In other words, the brain seemed to decide first, and the conscious mind became aware second.

Later studies pushed this even further. In some cases, researchers could predict what choice someone would make up to ten seconds before the person consciously reported making that decision. Ten seconds may not sound like much, but neurologically it’s an eternity. It suggests that what we experience as “I chose this” might actually be our conscious mind catching up to something that has already been decided by our subconscious beneath the surface.

The universe may seem random because it is so complex. On the grand scale, say of human society, there are so many different factors that it can be nearly impossible to predict certain events or outcomes. For example, predicting the outcome of an election, the fluctuations of the stock market, or the next global pandemic are all incredibly challenging due to the vast number of variables involved.

Even within a controlled laboratory environment, we sometimes observe apparent randomness at the smallest level. Consider an experiment where we excite an atom of hydrogen to the point where the electron gets released and breaks free from its orbit. It may appear random which direction it goes flying after it breaks free. But is this truly random, or is it because our instrumentation and tools are not capable of accurately measuring or predicting the incredibly fast-moving electron?

Science continues to show us that nothing in the universe is truly random. Everything can be predicted given the right tools and information. What looks like chaos is often hidden order.

And maybe our decisions are no different.

Your brain functions like an incredibly complex circuit. It receives inputs—memories, sensations, emotions, past experiences—processes them through neural pathways shaped by your genetics and environment, and then produces an output: a thought, a feeling, an action. If someone could perfectly map every neuron and every connection, they might be able to predict what you’ll do next, the same way a physicist can predict the path of a falling object.

Even neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change, doesn’t happen randomly. Those changes are guided by experiences you didn’t choose to have and conditions you didn’t choose to be born into.

When you step back and look at it this way, free will starts to look less like a unique ability of human intelligence and more like a story the brain tells itself. A useful story, but still a story.

That story helps us move through life without getting overwhelmed. Instead of tracking the infinite chain of causes behind every moment, we simply feel, “I had a choice and decided this or that.”

Free will, then, is an illusion—a very important one. This illusion of free will allows us to process vast amounts of data quickly and efficiently. It’s a shortcut our brains use to navigate the complexities of life.

There’s a simple example I love. Researchers throw a ball unexpectedly at someone and measure their brain activity. What they found is fascinating: the participants react to the ball, either moving or catching it, before the part of the brain associated with conscious thought or reason responds. When asked why they reacted the way they did, the participants will explain a rational thought like, “I caught the ball so that it would not hit me.”

This thought is produced in the rational part of the brain. However, this rational explanation comes after the action. The mind creates a narrative to make sense of something that already happened.

We do this all day long. Action first, story second.

At first, this idea cracked the foundation of all my spiritual beliefs. But over time, it started doing something unexpected. It made me a more empathetic person.

If free will is an illusion, then people aren’t simply choosing to be selfish, hurtful, or evil. They are the result of everything that has ever happened to them.

Your boss didn’t choose to fire you because he is a jerk. He fired you because everything that has ever happened to him in his life has shaped him into the person he is. He didn’t have a choice but to fire you.

Your spouse didn’t choose to marry you. Your marriage was already predetermined. Everything that has ever happened in the universe, everything that has ever happened to the two of you as individuals, led to the inevitable outcome of you two getting married. Your marriage was predetermined since the beginning of time.

Let’s take an extreme example. Let’s say there is a person who committed atrocious crimes—a serial killer. You may look at that person and ask, “How could he have done such an evil thing?” You may think that you would never have done such an evil act.

But the truth is that if you were in that person’s shoes—if you had their same DNA, their same life experiences, their same upbringing, their same mental health issues—then you would have chosen the exact same thing. You would be a serial killer too, which should make you very grateful that you were not born in their shoes.

This understanding does not relieve us from our duty to protect society by removing dangerous individuals from it, punishing them, or attempting to reform them. Just as if you had a cancerous mole on your arm, you would remove it to protect your body, so too must the collective consciousness of society protect itself, which is why we have evolved to have laws and law enforcement.

A deterministic understanding of the universe does not remove the need for laws and consequences, but it does open the door to understanding. It replaces hatred with empathy—though not necessarily compassion, pity, or permissiveness.

It can even change how you relate to the people you love, like your parents.

Most of us carry at least a little resentment against our parents, even if we love them deeply. Despite their best intentions, all parents make mistakes, and most of us inherit some form of trauma or limitation because of it.

For me, I’ve wrestled with questions like: why didn’t my parents do more to prepare me for the challenges of being a brown-skinned person in America? Why didn’t they encourage me to learn Spanish, the language of my ancestors? Why didn’t they teach me more about finances so I could have been more financially secure earlier in life?

Maybe your pain with your parents is different, maybe it’s heavier, but almost everyone has some place where they wish their parents had done better—even when, like mine, your parents are basically saints. Seeing them through this lens doesn’t erase the impact of what happened, but it can soften the blame. It helps you recognize that they were doing the best they could with the brain, resources, and emotional tools they had. And that understanding can be the beginning of forgiveness, not as a favor to them, but as a gift to yourself.

And it changes how you treat yourself, too.

You stop replaying every mistake as if you should have magically known better. You begin to see that, in each moment, you acted with the brain and awareness you had at the time. You were doing the best you could with the wiring you had. That realization can lift a surprising amount of guilt and shame.

I’ve felt this most sharply when I look back on my divorce. For a long time, I replayed the timeline like a courtroom drama in my head—searching for the moment I failed, the moment I should have said something different, the moment I should have been more mature, more patient, more present. I would ask myself where I screwed up, how I let the marriage fall apart, and what it meant about me that it didn’t work.

This way of seeing free will didn’t magically make the grief disappear, but it did loosen the self-punishment. It helped me hold two truths at once: I still have responsibility, and I can still learn—but I don’t have to hate myself for my failures or mistakes. I can see my younger self as a human being acting from pain, conditioning, blind spots, and unmet needs. And from that place, compassion becomes possible, which is what finally creates space for real change.

At the same time, none of this means you become passive or give up on life. You still make plans. You still work hard. You still show up for your family and your purpose. The experience of choosing still happens. It’s just part of the process rather than proof that you stand outside the universe, independently authoring every outcome.

This perspective can be incredibly liberating. It frees us from the burden of excessive worry about the future. Instead of anxiously trying to control every aspect of our lives, we can approach our journey with a sense of curiosity and openness. We can put forth our best efforts, knowing that these efforts themselves are part of the predetermined path.

There’s a strange peace that comes with that. You do your part, but you stop gripping so tightly. Instead of trying to force outcomes, you move through life a little more gently, a little more trustingly.

If success is part of your path, it will unfold. If a lesson is needed, that will unfold too. Your effort still matters, but it’s woven into something larger.

For me, this perspective has been surprisingly freeing.

This realization eases the constant anxiety about whether you are making the “right” decision and forever living with the consequences of your mistakes. Instead, you can focus on being present, doing your best, loving the people in front of you, and letting the rest play out as it will.

And when setbacks come, they don’t feel like personal failures anymore. They feel like chapters. Necessary steps. Part of a much bigger story that our small minds can’t fully see.

There’s something deeply spiritual about that.

Life isn’t a test you might fail. Instead, it’s a path you’re meant to walk.