Have you ever seen a clear vision of your future? I have experienced this type of vision on a couple of occasions in my lifetime, and although I cannot be certain I was being given a glimpse into the future,  there was enlightenment and understanding at that moment.

The most powerful episode of this phenomenon happened for me in June of 1976. It was my senior year in high school, and the graduation ceremony for our class had just ended. The institution many of us loved to hate was, at last, pushing us out into the world, no longer interested in our attendance, our dilemmas, or complaints. It was time to close the chapter on another year of graduates; there was an endless supply of future graduates stacked up behind us.

High School had been a strange existence for me. I was present, I attended class but somehow managed to exist on the fringes, just connected enough to make it to graduation. I don’t remember much about the ceremony other than it was outside in a park a few blocks from the school. I have an eight by ten photo of me receiving my diploma. I was wearing platform shoes, the style in 76, and with my six-foot four-inch height, I appeared to dwarf the official handing out the diploma’s.

The aftermath of the ceremony was an unorganized scattering of graduates and their families. Many, including myself, traveled the few blocks back to the school and stood in small groups talking and taking pictures. It was almost as if, now that we had our freedom, we weren’t altogether sure that’s what we wanted — standing in the shadows of the same buildings we often viewed as a prison, they somehow now seemed like familiar, safe places.

It was during this time as I watched students posing with family members and other students who wandered about the campus like they did not know what to do next, that the vision came to me. There wasn’t any thunderclap or fanfare accompanying it, only a realization of its meaning that was as clear as if it had already come to fruition. It was a statement, stark and unambiguous. I have reasoned that my fringe existence could have influenced my thinking, but the visions clarity was powerful, and I remember it today, 43 years later, like it happened yesterday.

What I saw so clearly in that moment was a simple truth that I would never see any of these people again. For someone on the fringes, looking in, that was still a hard concept to grasp after spending the last four years with the majority of the graduates and the last 12 years with the ones from my previous school. Even though it was a harsh concept, because of the vigorous way in which it had come into my consciousness, I believed it 100 percent.

Everything happening around me now took on new meaning, and the scene turned into a surreal experience. The vision as it turns out, was extremely accurate, and in November of that same year, I enlisted in the US Air Force and spent the next eight years of my life working at a pilot training base in Tampa, Florida.

I have never spent much time in life looking backward, the struggle to survive, keeping me focused in a forward direction. I do have some regrets about not taking better advantage of those formative years, but there are few benefits derived from regrets and no way to change the past. What I have discovered is that life is a series of chapters and transitions, and we are ultimately in charge of our own story. Like a good book, our story has a chance to get better with each chapter we write.