He sat there at the edge of the world, looking admirably at the waterfall that went on into the gorge in front of him. The waters went on and disappeared into its vast darkness, only to reappear in the form of a calm, gentle river, that flowed on, into the oblivion of the sea.

It was funny, he thought, how the furious currents bowed down to the darkness and came out of it, having lost all that fury, all that rage and hatred to it. Maybe that’s what he needed. Maybe that’s why the world showed him the dark path all this while, just to make him reach that one point in his journey, where it would all just start to make sense. He picked up a pebble and threw it into the waters. He knew he would never see that pebble again, and that was the point of it all. He didn’t want to see it again. He knew that the ferocious waters would wash it down and take it away from him, keeping it in the darkness where it would stay, until a wave comes by and takes it along with itself into the calm flowing river ahead. For now, the ghosts of the pebble’s past have been washed away, and it has lost all its imperfections.

He felt, for a moment, that he was the pebble that he threw. He saw himself falling into the darkness, the waters hitting him from all directions, making him weightless as he kept falling down until he hit the bottom. The fall had been wonderfully scary, but now that he was at the bottom, he knew there was no further he could go. So he stayed there, getting hit by one wave after another, just begging for something, anything, to come and take all that agony away from him, and that is when it happened. He saw it come his way with such a rush that he knew it was now or never. Just like that, he let go of all emotions, all thoughts, all presumptions of future, all desires of a life he couldn’t have, and just, simply, let go. He flowed along, with his eyes closed, not trying to fight it anymore, and all of a sudden he felt a calm around him. He had become so used to the fury, that this calmness made him uneasy. He looked at the sea around him, with his entire existence shaken up by the darkness that he was coming out of. “Is this all real?”, he asked himself in disbelief, “Is the darkness over?” He looked up at the Sun, not trying to shield himself from its brilliance, for it had been ages since he had felt its warmth embrace him. He looked back at the darkness where he had come from and thanked it for making him understand the true meaning of his existence. He knew that this was the moment he was reborn. This was the moment he was going to live from now on. This was his moment, and that darkness was his friend. It had always been his fierce friend. He would go back to it whenever he needed to seek his purpose in life, but it would never dictate his course now. For he had left his demons at the fork in the darkness, and the darkness had embraced all of them, keeping them there for him to see whenever he needed to visit again.

He saw the waters fall into the darkness for a little while more, smiled, got up, and left…