The Friend

A few years ago now, a friend of mine suddenly died. He was my age. He had spent the last ten years or so working very, very hard to build a computer company. He was a wonderful man, great at a party and somewhat of a raconteur. He always brought people together. He once said that he was compiling a list of incredible people but the truth was that he was the incredible person who connected so many of us. Still, he was a remote person, hard to get close to in an intimate way. He was like a lot of men I know. Robert Bly put in best when he said, "It's well known that any man would prefer to walk thirty miles upwind in a blizzard than talk for ten minutes about his relation to a woman or to God." My friend was like that.

In the latter years of his life, his ambition became a dominant force in his life. When he died, his company was trading on the New York Stock Exchange. He was worth in the neighborhood of three million dollars. I had lost touch with him and only heard of his passing in the newspapers.

Just a few days after he died, I had a dream about this man. We were all at a party. I was very surprised to see him there. I walked up to him and said in my most direct manner, "So your not dead." He looked at me, quite shocked and a little hurt, "No," he said. "It was just a test." He seemed a little softer to me, a little more buffeted by the wind than I remember him. And then he said, "I'm more compassionate now. I listen to people more." And I rejoiced to have my friend back and I rejoiced to have my friend back somehow a better man than he was - and he was a very good man. And then I woke up -to grieve for him once more, while God continued to delight in his company.

Living With The Silence of God

Tell me it's a bad dream. Tell me it's not real. Tell. me. Tell me ... I'm tossing and turning and soon I'll wake up from this nightmare. tell me I'm still happy ... Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me, I can't bear it ... I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.

[All] have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, .... Is it no more than to shine at practicalities– the getting of food, clothing, shelter? why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?

- Yan Martel, The Life of Pi