Recently I sat down to watch a made for TV movie starring one of 90210's alumni. It was this year's holiday feel-good movie and it was about a callous reporter trying to solve the mystery of a small-town-America Secret Santa. Apparently, for the last decade or so, various townsfolk have received surprise gifts on or around Christmas. Each recipient was a person in special need and the gifts were essentially Godsends. Long story short, it was your average cut-and-paste "callous non-Santa believer learns to believe in Santa and embraces the true spirit of Christmas." It was hokey and I never finished watching it. As a result, my father mentioned that maybe I shouldn't be as cynical as I am and that maybe, for once, I could appreciate the content of something rather than the presentation.
That got me thinking. I decided that instead of writing something that would ultimately be deemed cynical—apparently, that's all I'm capable of producing—I'd sit down and give my best shot at writing something that might mean something to someone. This of course goes against my reputation, which is anything but self-appointed, as a person who A) doesn't smile enough, B) is shy and quiet and therefore assumed unfriendly, and C) supposedly morbid. In reality, that last one is just a product of being constantly misread as serious when, in fact, I'm just dry-as-the-desert sarcastic. Either way, what I have decided to try to do is tell you my only real-life Christmas story. Be warned though, as with most Christmas stories, there is an element of sadness that must exist for the ultimate joy to be revealed. I am not being morbid; I'm just being honest.
A long time ago, I knew a kid who, to this day, comes in and out of my life. I used to know him well, now I know him in passing and when he reveals himself to me. This kid was shy and lacked almost all self-confidence. He had friends, but only because he had grown up with them. To drop him from their circle would be like getting rid of the teddy bear or blanket you slept with just because you outgrew it. He rarely spoke to people he didn't know and almost never spoke to girls. He was an all-around quiet person and quite often, you would mistake him for a shadow tagging behind someone.
His best friend was someone he had known since kindergarten and was a true friend. Other people in his circle of friends were constantly looking to move beyond him now that they had a whole menagerie of people to choose from as friends in the high school setting. This kid, though, was genuinely his friend and treated him as such. They were inseparable, like brothers.
On December 23, when the two were sophomores in high school, they got into a car to drive to a friend's party, but got into an accident and never made it there. One of them died. It wasn't the quiet kid I know.
The next day, after the quiet kid found out what happened (he had not been told until the next morning in the hospital), his parents drove him home and prepared for Christmas. It was a really crappy Christmas. Nothing felt joyous about the day. Nothing felt right about living really—by all accounts of the accident, the quiet kid should have died, too. It wasn't possible for anything good ever to come from what had happened. Still, something good managed to come of it. It was a real life miracle; a real-life Christmas miracle.
One by one, all the people in the quiet kid's life, a group he never really felt he belonged to or with, all showed up at his house. They showed up and they cried. They showed up and they hugged the quiet kid. They showed up and they said in the most genuine way, some without words, "Hey Quiet Kid, I love you and you're my friend and I’m glad you're still here for me to tell you this."
For the first time in the quiet kid's life, he had to be strong. He had to not break down, because if he broke down, none of these people would know what to do. They had already lost a friend and they needed to know that they had not lost another one. So the quiet kid slowly told each person, one by one, that everything was going to be okay. He told them that he would be okay and they would be okay, too. And when they left his house that morning, he told them to have a Merry Christmas and that he would talk to them soon. The world had changed, and some things were really bad about it, but some things were okay.
The quiet kid would never be quiet from that day on. He opened up and started accepting the fact that he had to do a little work to make the relationships in his life that were important to him mean something. He started saying things he meant instead of saying things he thought people wanted to hear, maybe because he knew life was short and the only things worth saying were the things that meant something to someone. Not everything about him was changed for the best. He had naturally become a little bit callous, a bit jaded, and what quietness that was left was replaced with a weird introspection. But he was strangely happy and uniquely and profoundly changed by the realization that the things in life that people take for granted are always the things people miss the most when gone. That thought ultimately outweighed some of the weirdness that surrounded him.
I still see him around and sometimes I notice the Old Him hiding as the shadow of the New Him. Although I don't see him a lot, I think about him a lot. He reminds me of what is important in life: the people in your life. Because really, you are only a reflection of those whom you reflect off. The people in your life make your life tolerable.
So during this time of Christmas Spirit and Holiday Joy, maybe you can take stock of your life and tally things up. Count all the bad things in your life that you hate and would change if you could. Then count all your friends. Look and see if the number of bad things in your life are greater than the number of people you count as friends. I doubt it will be, but if it is, multiply the number of friends you have by at least ten, because if you're honest with yourself, there's nothing in your life that could ever outweigh the sheer importance of good friends and what they are capable of doing to change you for the better. Nothing.