Before anything changed
I have never forgotten a spring day in 1995.
I was 16 years old and had gone out alone on my bicycle.
It was around noon.
The weather was cloudy, but warm.
I had stopped in a green field, somewhere behind the Faculty of Civil Engineering, and was looking at the sky.
There were a few small clouds above me.
I don't know why, but that day I felt I should pray.
I had tried praying for small things before, but without being fully convinced that my prayer was heard.
This time I closed my eyes and said aloud:
“Lord, please, clear the sky for me.”
After I opened my eyes, within a few minutes I began to see something I didn't expect.
The clouds above me were fading and disappearing.
I continued to pray.
After 10–15 minutes, the sky above me had cleared.
I was so happy that, before heading home, I prayed again.
This time I asked God to clear the path I would take on my bicycle as well.
I would follow the road along the Small Ring Road, from the Faculty of Civil Engineering towards the “Vasil Shanto” school, then turn towards the Pyramid and continue to the Ballet School, where my home was.
And then something happened that even today, after more than 30 years, makes me say:
Wow.
The clouds in front of me began to part on both sides, leaving a clear space in the middle.
It was as if the sky was mirroring the path I was taking below it.
When the road made a 90-degree turn towards the Pyramid, the space in the sky also continued to turn.
I was cycling.
The sky opened before me.
When I arrived home and went out on the balcony, I could still see the trace of that clear path in the sky, from where I had started to my house.
I was only 16 years old then.
I didn't know how to explain it.
But I knew I had experienced something I would not forget.
That experience remained in my memory for many years.
But, without realizing it, I forgot something else.
I forgot to ask.
The turning point
I grew up.
I started working.
I built a career.
I launched projects.
I pursued opportunities.
I earned money.
I lost money.
I took on responsibilities.
I started a family.
There was always something else to do.
Even when I was tired, I kept going.
I thought I just needed to work a little harder.
To earn a little more.
To solve one more problem.
To reach one more point.
Then the day would come when I would stop.
Only that day never came.
Life turned into a kind of non-stop highway.
Walking.
Work.
Responsibilities.
Problems.
Money.
People.
Family.
Expectations.
And work again.
The more I walked, the less I stopped to ask myself:
“Where am I going?”
What I understood
At one point, everything started to weigh heavily.
It was no longer just fatigue.
It was a feeling of being stuck.
Stress.
Anxiety.
Disappointment.
And an inability to see beyond what was happening that day.
It was as if my mind was walled in.
I could think about the problem I had before me.
About the bill that needed to be paid.
About the work that needed to be done.
About the people I had to face.
But I couldn't see any further.
That's when I started to realize something.
When I was 16, I had stopped.
I had looked at the sky.
I had sought a path.
Thirty years later, I was doing the opposite.
I was running.
But I was no longer seeking to know where I was going.
What changed
One day, when I couldn't take it anymore, I went to the lake.
I sat down.
Then I knelt.
I had no more beautiful words.
I had no plan.
I had no clever solution.
I just said:
“Lord, I give up. I can't do it anymore. Help me.”
And something changed within me.
Not because I solved all the problems at that moment.
But because, for the first time in a long time, I stopped trying to find my own way.
Then that day in 1995 came back to my mind.
The field behind the Civil Engineering building.
The bicycle.
The clouds.
The path opening in the sky.
A 16-year-old boy who didn't know much about life, but knew how to stop and say:
“Lord, show me the way.”
And I realized that perhaps that experience hadn't remained in my memory just as a beautiful miracle.
Perhaps it had been a lesson that I had forgotten.
The word that explains it
Today, when I look at my life from that point, I don't think my problem was that I wasn't moving.
On the contrary.
I was moving too much.
The problem was that I had started to believe that if I worked hard enough, tried hard enough, and solved enough problems, I would find my own way.
For a long time, this seemed normal to me.
Until I realized something:
You can be moving every day and still be moving away from where you need to go.
This was my first revelation.
I didn't need to run faster.
I needed to stop and seek direction.
Perhaps you know that feeling too.
Perhaps you are working every day.
Taking responsibility.
Solving problems.
And trying to do your best.
But somewhere deep inside you've started to ask:
“Is this really my path?”
I don't have the complete answer for you yet.
But I know where the change began for me.
It began when I stopped.
And it began again with the same request I had made when I was 16 years old:
“Lord, show me the way.”
Next step
Perhaps you are not lost because you are not moving enough.
Perhaps you are tired of moving without stopping to seek direction.
And, if this sounds like your story, then the next question is no longer:
“How do I run faster?”
But:
“How do I find the path I should follow?”
Where you can continue
UNDERSTAND THE WORD → Where did we come from?