When I woke up, I found myself lying on the ground somewhere hidden in an endless grassy meadow. With the sun shining down on my face. Warm sunlight, a gentle spring breeze, way out in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere in particular. The grass was swaying in the light, and it had grown much higher since I had lain down there earlier. Earlier some time who knows when. A swaying green enclosure of thick blades, high, higher and higher. Blue sky and one fluff of white stringy threads of elongated cotton passing by. A cloud all alone over there. I stood up and brushed the dust from my pants. Way off in the distance there was this grassy knoll, sloping gently upwards until it met the horizon. A glare, a white speck, something interesting I had to see. Discover it for myself.

What could that be? I stretched my arms and legs, and I decided to make the long journey. Might as well start now, I thought. Now or never. About a kilometer or two or it could even be three, I estimated. Or so I thought. At a gentle and easy pace I made it up the grassy knoll, and the breeze blew across my face, a bit harder but still not too hard. The waft of a cloud had disappeared over to the east, and the afternoon sky was getting slightly darker, ever so slightly. Shadows forming, low and stretched to the side and in front of me. Where I was going.

I approached the white speck and it grew to a block, a slab of sun bleached stone. It appeared to be growing out of the top of the tall blades of grass. Growing upwards, barely emerging. Solid but moving at the same time. A slab of stone, rounded at the top, thicker at the bottom or so it seemed and just about that thick or maybe thicker or this thick.

What? There was this pit in front of it, recently dug out and all ready waiting to be filled again. While the soil was still moist and soft and curled over to the sides. Huh? It was a tombstone and it was waiting for someone. Who could that be? Wait a minute. I realized in an instant that that someone was me, me! Realized with a start, with a shock, a skip of a beat of the heart. I peered in closely at the recently dug out pit, and then at the bleached and scratched surface. There was something engraved in the stone, some words or a saying of some sort or other. And it said, it said, it said. I could not quite make it out, but I was certain what the message was. Something deep and meaningful, a celebration, that my life had been worth it all, that I had accomplished what I was born and set out to do. That I had gotten to know myself and the world around me better, true knowledge and intuition and feeling all combined within a perfect mix. The perfect liquid mix whatever that could be.

Worth it all, worth it all. The perfect liquid mix.

When I closed my eyes I then woke up again. This time in the very same spot where this adventure had first started two kilometers or so earlier. The grassy meadow, the cloud in the sky at the very same spot it had been at first, the soft breeze exactly as soft and gentle as it had been back then. But this time I knew. I knew better. When I stood up and brushed the dust for the second time from my pants, or was it really the first time again, I knew. I knew. There was still a long way to go, and there was enough time to think, to prepare myself and to figure out what those words were, what they would become, what they would be, my life encompassed on a sun bleached surface of stone. Just words, but nonetheless.

There was still a long ways to go, but there would be time. Time enough. Time enough before I reached the sun bleached surface again.