By Francis Romulo Moya
A FRIEND: THE UNORDINARY
A friend is a friend is a friend, whatever color, smell, sole condition, identity status, like a rose which is a rose, whatever variety, it’s the same, as Gertrude Stein emphasizes in a poem.
A work colleague congratulates you for your promotion. He or she is a workmate, not a friend. Immediately upon turning your back, he or she will smirk, the congratulatory handshake was cold not warm.
Fellow cagers and teammates raise you up, while you hold the perpetual championship trophy. You made all the three-point shots, what’s why. They’re happy for the moment. And the plan and maneuvering start. Next time one of them will be raised up, no longer you. They’re your teammates, not your friends.
Engaging in camaraderie is not friendship, just having common interests and ways to indulge. It’s purely enjoying and laughing and boozing and whatever titillating done together, not submerging in the pains and joys of friendship. A friend experiences with you the pain, not just a happy moment.
A friend believes in you even if you lack something or deficient of what’s required. He or she encourages you. Motivates you. Lifts you up. It’s because, with all that you lack, he or she still believes you will make it, you will overcome, you will manage to hitch your wagon to clinch your star. And this last phrase sounds trite, often heard that it bores eardrums, if not irritates. But that’s friendship, the triteness is just as surprising of something novel, so brightly new, sparkling the freshness even if it appears in the verge of gaping, like a worn-out shoe.
An unordinary soul is a friend. So many dwellers on a branch, leaves elbow each other fighting congestion. Rare are sweet fruits that never rot. Not ordinary sources of life-giving juice and pulp and the meat found at the endocarp. They are named Juicy Friends.
They were there at my worst moment immediately after the Tempest Odette. They brought food and water at my temporary dwelling place at the sidewalk. They brought me my needs while I stayed at an abandoned garage, sleeping on the concrete covered with cardboard.
They rushed me to the hospital, approximately an hour before my Call Time. They arranged the hospital, concerned of my comfort and doing everything so as not to stress me. At the airconditioned private room, help from everywhere arrived. All from real humans. True people. Generically called, friends. I was discharged after 15 days. Not a tint of stress. Not blot to worry. They did it all. All done by friends.
Abraham Lincoln became US president. His monument at the Lincoln Center appears magnificent, worthy of international respect and universal admiration. Even as a great resident of the White House, the center of power, he did not forget a friend who believed in him. He reaped success because that friend admired that Abe had what it takes to be the great leader of a great nation, even if Abe’s shadow looked like Ichabod Crane.
December 1, 2022, 4:38 p.m.
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