I asked Ashley what she thought of friendship. I admit now that it was a vague question and maybe I thought that I was emitting a deep and thoughtful aura that would give her the specifics of the question. She asked what I meant. We were lying on the roof of an 18 story New York High rise. The Empire State Building loomed stoically behind us, actually that’s an insult to the building itself. With red, yellow and blue lights illuminating its crest, I could tell it was going more for playful and relevant. Now let me try this again: The Empire State Building loomed playfully and timely behind us, so close that I felt that I could fog the windows with every exhale. I waited for the breeze to finish its therapy and clarified. I asked her what she thought of friendship. The reason being that at that time I was thinking of all the people I would consider important to me. The people I befriended at various times in my life as well as my family and extended family.
Someone important-- I spend a good amount of time thinking about someone important to me whether it be a friend or relative. Lately, those people have been more supportive than ever. And though I’ve practiced to become less obvious, those people can read me like an open book. The truth is that I’ve gotten everything I sought out for. And now I am mere weeks away from starting my law education at one of the most prestigious Ivy League schools in the country. Oh, I got exactly what I sought for. And now that my attention isn’t consumed with trying to get in, I am able to comprehend the sheer magnitude of what I am about to embark on. Columbia is huge and the City of New York is still grander and I feel overwhelmed. It’s like I’m standing alone in a vast darkness. I’m afraid and I’m not sure why. My anxious expressions and nervous eyes betray me every time as someone’s cue for a word of comfort. “You’re going to do fine” I smile, they smile. Time and time again my confidence and I stop talking and it leaves me. Those important to me act as intercessors between the two of us and once they get done with us I can feel my confidence return to me again.
My friends and family have hijacked my life. They’ve taken hostages. They approached innocent and harmless enough but at the appointed hour they took my affinity for them hostage and started making demands. They demanded that I not give up; they demanded that I continue to grow; they demanded that I believe in myself, and they demanded that I be happy. It happened too fast for me to form any sort of a resistance. When I was younger the idea that my friends or family believed in me was non-existent, it’s not to say that they didn’t, rather it wasn’t apparent to me. But now they yell their demands from a loud speaker making it so I can’t ignore it. They insist that I understand that they will not tolerate any second guessing myself, they will not tolerate low self esteem or a victim’s mentality, and they will not tolerate mediocrity from me. Not me. The hijackers, they have no connections to each other, some have known me my whole life and others for much shorter a time. They are of all races and live all over the world. They have different political and religious beliefs but they all come together with the same message: We’re proud of you-- those terrorists.
I love them. I love them for their violent seizure of my ambition. I love them for their ceremonial execution of the doubts I have in myself. I love them for their unreasonable, selfless demands of me. Where it started as Mark’s ambition for a successful and fruitful life it has become our ambition for Mark’s successful and fruitful life. And where as I started my life out as child running a lemonade stand, at first I simply wanted to make a few dollars to spend on pop and movies, now the business has gone public. There are people who have bought stock in it, they have proclaimed that this business will thrive and they have the utmost faith in its CEO. I can feel their belief in me and it manifests itself into my own confidence and motivation. And it’s obvious to me now why it is significant to always encourage others. And I don’t mean significant as in “do it because you’re a good person” I mean significant as in “do it and it will help others become great people.”
If there were ever a time in the future that I was going to be pushed to the brink of giving up, the people important to me serve as insurance that that can no longer happen. Certainly when I feel that I can’t go any further, and turn around to retreat back to comfort and safety, I will find that I wasn’t walking the path alone but my family and friends were right behind me. And once again they will encourage me “You’re doing fine. Keep going.”
Breathtaking-- this view, I can see most of Manhattan from up here. Amidst the night’s darkness, the buildings spring up like flowers from dark concrete. The lights shine through the windows carelessly like the sun’s light reflecting off the dew that relax on yielding petals in the early morning. That’s quite like what important people do in our lives. They are everywhere making what should be darkness into something more like beauty. They are our own little skyline. As long as those lights remain shining through the window there is comfort that we are certainly not alone in our lives.
This has to be shared. This has to be contagious. Precisely because I know the remarkable affects that an important person can have on my life it makes me want to be a better son, brother, cousin and friend to those who consider me important and let them know that I am behind them, that I’ve invested my faith into their business.
Life seems to become more enriched the older I get and even friends that I thought I had grown apart from selflessly come back with an interest in my well being. It’s so beautiful. If I were to tell any of the important people to me how afraid and uncertain I am and how dark the city felt to me, I would be told to stop being ridiculous and take a good look around. I’m surprised that even in the middle of the night all I can see are lights. And I have to laugh; another light turned on in a building downtown, and the city seemed a little brighter.
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