On the other side of this nation, a man lives in a state that I have never visited.

This man and I, we have never looked into each other’s eyes and smiled at a secret joke that only close friends share.  We’ve never talked on the phone, or had dinner together with our families.  We’ve never stopped by each other’s places for a cup of coffee or offered to watch each other’s children.

Still, we are friends.  Not close in the way that most people define “close,” of course.

Every few days, we take the time to read about each other’s lives, offer support when needed and encouragement when appropriate.  This is what binds us.  And this, in my mind, is enough for a friendship to be real.

Jason’s life, in so many ways, is a lot like mine.

We have spouses.

We have children.

We have siblings.

We have responsibilities, obligations, joy, laughter and a strong sense of treating other people with kindness and compassion.

We are also different in many ways.  Most of those ways don’t matter to me, save that they might actually make me like Jason a little more.

There is one difference between the two of us, though, that does matter to me.

My mother is alive and Jason’s is not.

Jason lost his mother to breast cancer in 1996.

As a general rule, I try to put myself in other people’s shoes all the time.

How would I feel?  What would I do if I were this person?  How would I want another person to support me?

In this case, I am not comfortable doing this.

But, I will.

Because Jason is my friend, and that’s what friends do for one another.

If I had lost my mother to breast cancer over a decade ago, I would miss her every single day until the day I died.

I would push back tears every single time I had to mention her to someone.

I would wish with all my might that she were here to watch my kids graduate from high school, college, maybe even see them get married.

I would feel inadequate when I tried to describe who she was to my children who had never met her.

I would feel anger, guilt and unbearable sadness.

I would become a person who had to try to be happy because my mother’s absence would make something that should feel natural feel just that more forced.

I would wonder why this had to happen.

I would want to know how I could have stopped this.

I would look around for ways that I could stop this from happening to other women, to other families.

I would find an organization like Susan G. Komen, dedicated to educating communities about breast cancer prevention that worked not only on a local level, but on an international level, to raise awareness.

I would begin to understand that one of the best ways to stop this from happening again to someone else, maybe even to my own daughter, would be to support an organization like this.

I would commit myself to helping this organization.

I would volunteer to walk sixty miles over a three day period so someone else’s mom, maybe my friend’s mom, would have a chance against a disease that claimed over 40, 000 lives in 2009.

I would sleep on the ground in a tent even though I abhor the thought of sleeping outside.

I would want my friends to support me through that.

I’m not saying that’s how Jason feels.  I’m saying if I were Jason, that’s how I would feel.

I know that this is what I would want and also who I would want to be.

Jason is my friend, and I’m supporting him because that’s what I would want.

Please CLICK HERE to support my friend Jason if you feel so inclined.  No amount is too small.

I need a week or so away from the Internet.  Or, specifically, from blogs.

So, if you have a blog, I don’t hate you, I haven’t unsubscribed, you are still 100 degrees of awesome.  I just have some stuff I have to do.

[Write something about how I need to reorganize my entire house and bills and life because I cannot see straight due to the clutter that has accumulated over the past fifteen months.  Husband, beware, I'm going to purchase refill tape for my label maker, file folders and more whiteboards tomorrow and thus life with your crazy super organized wife will resume shortly.]

Anyway, I’ll be back here and at your places in about a week or so.

I will still be on twitter and Facebook because, my God, there’s no need to get crazy and turn into the unibomber.

[Reminder to the uninitiated: Yes, I know, Muslim bloggers should not use the word "bomb" on their blogs.  Even when trying to be funny.  But me?  I like to thumb my nose at the establishment. Bring on the body scans!]

In the meantime, let me tell you about how this weekend, my mom gave me my childhood in a box.  You know, kindergarten certificates and newspaper clippings, etc.  It was a strange thing because, well, I just thought she’d want to keep that stuff forever and ever because she loves me so much.

But, apparently, she, too, is sick of the clutter.  The clutter of my childhood.  Sob.  She didn’t say it, but I swear as she handed me the box, I heard her voice boom “My job here is done” in my head.

Anyway, in this box was a paper written by a psychologist who had the joyful task of evaluating me for gifted classes when I was twelve years old.  I had not, until this weekend, actually seen the written results of this evaluation, but had only heard them.

Mostly in the context of, “You are way too smart to be getting crappy grades like this.”

Now, please, I’m not going to get annoying and share the actual results with you because most of you already know I’m very smart.  Haha.  No, but, really, I am.  And I actually have documentation, now.

However,  I do want to share the following excerpt with you, my dear, non-judgey friends:

“Faiqa appeared to be highly motivated to do well.  On occasion her anxiety about doing well probably had somewhat of a negative effect on her performance.”

You know what?  That information?  Would have been NICE TO KNOW twenty two years ago.  Correction, twenty two years, three thousand self help books, three majors, one husband and two kids ago.

Because that’s what it took to get me to realize that it is not the gold stars and head pats that matter, but that life’s real joy resides in the things you actually do in life and how you feel while you are doing them.  We do things because they feel right and good and honest.

Gold stars are for gunners, not winners.  In the end, a gold star doesn’t make laying your head down at night any easier or fill one’s heart up with a sense of completeness.  A gold star just tells you that someone else thinks you’re doing a good job.  You have to think you’re doing a good job, in the end, that’s what matters.

Life lesson:  A good job is the one you enjoy.  Gold star optional.

Still, yeah, it would have been awesome to know that when I was twelve.

I absolutely don’t want anything to be different, of course.

I’m just saying that some of those self help books were a real pain to read.

And it would be nice to get that money back because I have a lot of label maker refill tape to buy.

See you in a week.  Or so.

Dear California,

Thank you so much for loaning us your Hilary for the past year, it has been a real pleasure.

She’s one of my best friends now, and it is so hard for me to figure out how that happened so fast.  I don’t make best friends very fast, you know.  That stuff takes years with a person like me.  Personally, I think it’s because you have a hippy-dippy love culture going on California, and a few of us in Florida got it all over our clothes while Hilly was here.

Happiness.  That’s what Hillary means, and I have never met someone so dedicated to the pursuit of happiness.  Make sure, California, she finds it when she gets there because she’s worked for it.  She deserves it.

Hilly is our Michael, the reluctant one, the one who pretends she doesn’t belong, but, in the end, the one who belongs most of all.  In fact, she defined The Family in so many ways.  Vito, Sonny and Tom aren’t much fun without Michael.  I mean, they’re still fascinating and awesome, but, let’s face it, they aren’t much of a mafia without Michael around.

California, please do let Hilly know that there will never be another Michael.  Not for us, not for me.  There can be only one.  That’s actually from Highlander.  Which I enjoyed and was probably filmed in California, so thanks for that, too.

Anyway, California, with your awesome weather, super nice people who are so laid back and with your superhero Austrian governor who is surprisingly Republican, thank you for lending us Hilary for a year.  She made Florida so much better when she was here.

Disco Baby, N. and The Dood Kisses,

Faiqa

P.S. Please don’t fall into the ocean.  Seriously.  I mean it.

Edited:  And I spelled her name wrong in the original post.  Because I am an awesome friend.

I’m very calculated about expressing myself.  I keep forgetting that a lot of people aren’t.

This makes me take the things that people say way more seriously than I should.  I assume that a misplaced word or someone’s lack of diplomacy is a slight.  It’s not always so.  It’s usually not so.

I don’t assign a whole lot of value to the mundane.  I keep forgetting that a lot of people do.

I don’t care how other people do things unless their actions make my life more difficult or painful.  I really, really don’t care.  I think I’m just going to stop telling others how I do things. Do I recycle or don’t I?  How often do I clean my house?  Does my kid dress herself?  Who cares.

I’m beginning to realize that some people just use information like this to either reaffirm internal beliefs based on their own perceived superiority or inferiority.  I’m exhausted by this and, as of this moment, my need to share is superseded by my need for peace.

I stopped competing and comparing myself to others a very long time ago.  I keep forgetting that some people haven’t.

I find it fascinating how people can become so blindly involved in comparing and competing with others that they miss out on real human connection.  The only way they seem to relate is through “more” or “less” and “better” or “worse.”

This behavior makes me sad, and I just want to be happy.

I don’t care about better or worse, more or less.  Seriously, it is not even on my radar, so when someone starts talking like that, it’s like their speaking a different language.  I don’t get it.  And, more importantly, I don’t want to get it.

Fine.  You are better.  You win.  You have the most.  Congratulations.  Now go be the best, winningest person with the most over there.

Requirements for intimate friendships should be basic or simple, or we might find ourselves alone.

Someone that really, truly doesn’t keep track of these things on a metaphorical balance sheet is ideal.  People shouldn’t have to tally results at the end of the day to figure out whether or not they feel good about themselves.

This ensures, of course, that being close to them won’t mean feeling bad about yourself.

You have to have goals, they say. They, the architects of convenient platitudes that become false measures of our self worth.

There is something, however, that they forget to tell us, or perhaps that they don’t even know.

The end result, the goal, is just one part of the equation.

This simple truth resides in almost everyone’s awareness.

Yeah, yeah, life is a journey, not a destination. I get it.

But many people don’t.

They treat this truth the way they treat compliments.

Tell someone that, for example, they are beautiful or smart or kind or talented, and nine times out of ten you’ll get a thanks that sounds more like a brush off.  When someone gives me that brush off “thank you,” I realize something about them.

Somewhere deep inside, regardless of how confident they appear, this person believes that sadness, rejection and loss are the only real truths. They believe that when I point out that they are beautiful, smart, kind and talented that it’s only because they have me fooled. Furthermore, they want to believe that the people who diminish and deride them are the one’s who know the real truth.

They know the truth that we should all love ourselves, yet they cannot live it.

But I digress. I was talking about achievement and goals.

We know the truth that this goal or the next one we set does not define us. It cannot. Because most often, when we reach one goal, we are already setting our sights upon the next.

Know that the essence of who you are is not so fleeting. It is more permanent than that.

We tell ourselves that it’s about the journey and then we cry metaphorical or real tears of frustration when we don’t make it to the destination within the time frame or in the exact way that we envisioned.

This is our human condition. We know the truth, but we forget to live it.

We must grow in worthiness before we realize our desires. We must embrace the state of becoming that is required of us before we arrive at the destination we’ve selected.

Growth is often painful and terribly unpleasant, but necessary.

If you were who you needed to be in order to have what you want, you would already have what you want.

That’s so important, I’m going to write it again.

If you were who you needed to be in order to have what you want, you would already have what you want.

Don’t forget that it’s not where you’re going that makes you who you are, it’s the getting there that does.

Don’t you give up.

Don’t you stop trying.

Become.