Friends In Deed

Had lunch with Gabriel Pagán, of I Can't Spell fame. (Check it out.) Gentle soul with a sharp mind. I'm sure We'll share more time and thoughts in the coming months.

Question that came up during Our lunch: What technology, if implanted quickly in widespread fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on Puerto Rico?

During that lunch, I received a phone call from a distraught friend who had just received some shattering news. In seconds, My day went from pleasant to wrathful, for what My friend was enduring was pure betrayal and I didn't want the bastard to get away with it.

However, there wasn't anything I could do, except commiserate with My friend and lend support. Facing a crunching deadline, I listened and talked and listened some more, as half an hour became an hour. When We hung up, she was emotionally spent and I was looking to chew iron.

And the deadline was still there, a couple of hours away, half My self-allotted time to get the job done already gone. Computer on, reviewing e-mail to make sure the deadline is inflexible when...

Good news. No, great news. I take a few minutes to tell it to My Special One, then start calling the people who helped Me make it to the Goal. Laughter, happy voices and the inevitable (for Me) joking around. Half an hour goes by, My deadline looming now like a cold shadow. I click off the final "We did it!" call, My mind on the deadline...

One more call. "How are you?" I ask My betrayed friend. We talk for a few minutes, the hell with the deadline, the hell with the bastard, the hell with everything except friendship. She sounds better now, has a plan, is facing up to the pain knowing the worst is yet to come.

We say goodbye. My deadline is less than an hour away. I'll have to do the whole business plan in about 50 minutes, rather than 4 hours. I've done it in 2 before...

One minute before the deadline, I hit "Send." It's done. But rather than feeling a buzz of "Yeah, baby!" in-your-face victory, I feel a deep sense of satisfaction for what I've shared. That's not My usual cup of tea, this "friends indeed"--and friends in deed--warmth. My life has been more of an internal exploration that avoided too much entanglement. And yet, it is that very same "entanglement" that made My day, from meeting an insightful fellow blogger, to shouldering part of someone's unbearable pain to spreading the joy of well-earned accomplishment.

In short, I had a day of Life, a compression of lessons about the joys and sorrows of being part of a community. I have had days that were more emotional, and days that were sharper in their sense of victory, but no day has ever blended so much. Most of My days have traces of adventure running through them; this one had rivers of Life.


The Jenius Has Spoken.