‘Happy things happen when you’ve got a friend’

From across the miles I received a Christmas card from J.V., a newfound long-lost friend. I met him before; we were classmates in the laboratory class of Botany 1 back in UPLB in the late ‘80s. He said he was one of those who cheered me on while I danced on top of the lab table before our bearded professor entered the class. He remembered me as “someone who was crazy or crazy about life.”

Well, back in college, I was really crazy. Instead of seeing walls of cells under the microscope, I saw poetry in motion. As I peeped through the eyepiece that revealed to me how one cell could divide into two identical cells of minute proportions but incandescent in hues of blue, violet and pink, I saw Lilliputian ballerinas doing their arabesques. I forgot the technical term for the division of one singular cell — mitosis? My memory fails me now. I would always get a quizzical look from Dr. Gruezo, my lab instructor, every time he checked my technical papers  because technical writing was not my forte. And why I enrolled in that subject, even if my study plan did not require it, remains a puzzle for me. To this day.

But what did not puzzle me in those days is that an avenue of friendship is always available for people who are willing to traverse it. It was because I did not understand Botany 1 that much that someone helped me to at least get a grasp of it.

J.V. was one of the few who helped me unlock the mystery of Botany 1 all because I cried for help. Lesson learned: Never be afraid or ashamed to ask for help. Somehow, somewhere, someone will always be willing to help those who ask for it. I proved it. As always, I would give a barter. A song or two from Les Miserables or Little Mermaid for anyone who would teach me a lesson or two in Botany. We all thought it was a fair deal. Their selfless spirit was a good match to my juvenile soul. It was, in my mind, our first lesson on win-win situation. More than that, the generosity I received from them inculcated in my mind that the best way to be a friend is to be one.

J.V. and I got reconnected recently because somehow his cousin and I almost “had something” a few moons back. Or was it just in my mind?  Okay, it was an almost-affair that ended before it started. Because of that, J.V. started to call me “Cuz.” He said I was the “special cousin” he never had.

Thanks to technology, after 23 years, J.V., now based in California, and I found each other again. We catch up every night on Facebook, on Skype, over the phone. We talk about his affairs of the heart. I report to him my emotional dalliances the way someone would report to his brother. We laugh so hard when we chat that perhaps the cyber world has gone deaf, if not nuts, about our exchange of rhetoric.  Our fortysomething spirits tell us that, like Peter Pan, we will never outgrow the child in us. My rekindled friendship with him renews my belief that the sanctity of the child inside us is an intrinsic ingredient to manage the stress and pressure of our daily life. It is the child inside us that silences and stills the void that sometimes fills us.

In the card, he wrote, “Let me just say, Cuz, touching base with you brought back the good years I had at UPLB. It’s always best to look at the good things in life.”

Indeed, to echo J.V.’s thoughts, it’s always best to look at the good things in life. Just like it is an option to be happy than to be sad, to feel triumphant even in the face of defeat, to be content even if the world presents many options that will complicate our lives. It is always good to hope for better things to come even if bleakness stares at us in the eye.

Dreams do come true, I wrote once. Even nightmares do come true; but nightmares die where dreams live. So, crush your fears for dreams to live. No one deserves to live with fears in one’s heart.

I know how to live with fears in my heart, I intimated to J.V. in one of our chat sessions on FB. Those were the days when I experienced hunger in all forms — material, emotional. It’s not easy to be poor. But if there is one thing I will always be grateful for in life is that I was born to poor farming parents. The hunger I experienced thought me how to fill myself — and make my loved ones full — in the future. It was hunger that made me dream a dream. It was hunger that made me accomplish my ambition. My first ambition in life was not to become a teacher, a doctor, an engineer or a writer — it was not to remain poor for the rest of my life.   

Poverty presented it clearly to me that strength and courage are developed during trial, not when it is over. My parents, in their terse thoughts, added that in my pursuit of my dreams, the friends I would meet along the way would help me build my character. True enough, my big and small triumphs now are a product of a child who became obedient to his parents, a child who believed that everything is possible to achieve, a child who believed that real and well-meaning friends are necessary for one’s growth.

J.V. ended his Christmas card with this thought: “Happy things happen when you’ve got a friend.”

He is correct. J.V. is an early Christmas present I never expected I would be able to unwrap once more. Thank God the crazy person in me found him again.

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com. You may follow me on Twitter @bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday.)