He was just a boy when he knew he was special. Different. That he wanted more.

That marked the beginning of his dark night.

How is it that when he found his inner light, things seemed to get darkest?

It was only when he found his torch that the tunnel walls were illuminated. Then could he see, in contrast with his light, the hopelessness of the seemingly infinite darkness that surrounded him.

He made his way through those tunnels for years, unaware that there was an outside world. Sometimes his torch went dark, and he would even forget that he was in a tunnel system. His mind would fill in the darkness with horrifying images, and then it was him against the twists and turns of the tunnel system that was his mind.

After many years, he finally found a pothole.

The Sun was pouring through.

EUREKA!, he shouted. He set up camp here. Worshipping the light. Learning from it. Sometimes, he’d catch glimpses of conversation from the people above passing by. Some became aware of him shouting for help, and would offer him their words of encouragement.

He brought other stragglers in the tunnel there, proving to them that the outside world existed.

Some believed. Some, though, thought that it was just a trick their mind was playing on them. They had known the tunnels for so long that they could not even momentarily entertain the idea of a world beyond.

The others became renewed in faith and enthusiasm, though, too, just like him.

Some were prone to embrace the light, while others were too attached to the darkness of the tunnel walls, too comfortable in the shadows, the surety of the solid concrete walls.

Not him. He knew he could escape, and he would do it, no matter what. And that pothole kept his faith on fire, burning with the heat of the Sun pouring through.

But, eventually, he realized that in order to escape the tunnel system, he had to carry on, for greater lights than what peeked through the pothole lay beyond….