All Roads Converge

There is an old saying that all roads converge. It is more true than most people know. Travel on your favorite path and enjoy the familiar sights, and sounds that you know so well. When you least expect it in some unnoticed corner on your favorite path one day you may just find a little welcoming side path leading to a wonderful place.

It is a place beyond time. It is a place of peace, were all are welcome. It is a magical place where every visitor shapes it as they enter finding just the perfect spot for themselves. Ever expanding to welcome a new visitor, yet somehow still remaining the same, this is the place where all roads converge.
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When I first found this magical place, I found myself in a clearing in the woods, and a gentle stream flowing past. I found it so peaceful I stopped to enjoy the scene. "Welcome" a familiar voice said as I was stooping by the edge of the stream to run my hand through the water. I caught a whiff of pipe tobacco that smelled so much like the brand my grandfather smoked when he was alive.

I looked up into a face from the past. "How ..." I started to say.

With that familiar chuckle I remembered well he asked, "Don't cha know, Tiger? All roads converge, yah finally found the one here."

"But ..." Stopping to get my thoughts together I carefully crafted the rest of my response, "Huh?"

My grandfather smiled. "There's an old saying which all roads converge. It's more true than ..." and on my grandfather explained about this special place. I was mesmerize by his words. It has been so long that I heard that voice I just wanted to take it all in.

After he explained that this clearing was of my own making he gazed at a spot on the edge of the clearing and a path appeared while I watched. Gramp lead me to a rural setting, and one small house. The sound of many voices with Italian accents coming from inside the house.

"Where are we?"

"Where I grew up, Tiger. Braidwood when I was young, and what I found the last time I traveled to this place."

"Have I died?"

"No. To do that means the path that got you here would have faded, look behind you for the path home."

I looked. Somehow my clearing in the woods was right there by the open farm land, and the path that lead me to the clearing was visible also. I hadn't thought it was there before.

"Yah know, Tiger," said my grandfather as he look at my path "I never stopped being amazed watching someone's path appearin' like that. Fur the living who find their way here the path home is always in sight when they look fur it."

"And for you?"

"I live on too. The echoes of my youth are still in your genes. I may not be able to find the path back to your time any more, but I am right here where I always was."

As we got closer to the house the white tangled mess of hair my grandfather always had slowly became darker, and the wrinkles in his skin faded. "Fwhy don't ya go enjoy your life. Now that you found that all roads converge, you do know that we'll see each other again."