A good deed

I helped execute a surprise birthday party recently. Basically i got our friends together and went to her place and surprised her. It was more complicated, that was the idea. What was interesting was, one hour before the surprise was to be pulled, she texted me and asked if I was free to hang out. I knew that all her friends are not going to respond positively because… I have contacted them all and arranged for them to meet me. But it must have felt quite bad if everyone you called during your birthday said that they can’t make it. She must have felt dejected. But… that was my doing.

When we all surprised her, she was visibly touched. During the course of the evening she expressed her thoughts to me and even messaged me the next day telling me how she felt.

It felt good to have made someone’s day, or in this case, someone’s birthday. She might forget this birthday in light of the many other birthdays she will have with her other friends, her family and one day with her own family. But for me, I was just grinning as I made my way home.

I didn’t give her any present, my only expense was a birthday card. All her friends thought that the design was bad and said “Vernon why did u choose that? It doesn’t even have the words happy birthday on it”. Why? Because I thought that it would be a design she liked, and I was right. The next morning she text me telling me that she really liked the card and that I really know her well enough to have chosen such a design. What was my expense? My time, my single most precious resource, a resource even I do not know how much of it I even have, and yet I am giving and giving it away.

Time is one’s most precious resource, it is relationships’ most potent fertilizer, we never know how much of it we have, we can never lose a moment or gain a second. Time is a powerful servant and a merciless master, govern Time or be governed by it.

Knowing a person is a rewarding experience, I can attest to that fact. I believe in the few over the many, the quality over the quantity. Over the course of various relationships we have with people in our lives, every once in a while we connect with them, we touch their lives in ways we cannot imagine. That night was one of those nights, I helped a friend who was feeling lonely and left out to suddenly feel like she has the best friends in the world, I helped a girl fill an empty evening with unexpected laughter and cheer. That night was one such moment. I do hope I get to create such moments again, and I am sure I will.