THE GREATEST GIFT FROM A FRIEND

I believe that people come into your life for a purpose.

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During my first year in college, I met a new professor (E) who was teaching Philosophy. We shared a flat with his nephew (R) who was also taking a pre-med course in the same university. It was a brilliant meeting of minds - and cultivating our interests in life's philosophy, amidst the struggle of studies and cooking, cleaning and paying our bills. (Ang saya-saya, and feeling ko ang tali-talino ko talaga like Leah Salonga, being with these guys. Para kaming Bronte Sisters na puro books ang dala at kinakain! ).

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Ultimately E became a very good friend - a tutor, a challenger that opened my mind to a lot of things. And most of all to the greatest books ever written. He actually looked like Albert (Einstein), very soft spoken and has a very feminine and caring soul. Though he has not really came out - we felt that sense of belonging. Mutual understanding. An affinity with the muses! (Once while reading Dune, I imagined him as the mother reverend Mohiam of the Benne Gesirit and I am her student princess Irulan).

Books and reading and discussing them afterwards were our virtue - and became our greatest bond since. He gave me a list of books to read which I borrowed from his collections or from the library. This is when I discovered and loved the following authors and their works (to name a few that I could recall):

• Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov),
• Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Anthem, Atlas Shrugged, We The Living),
• Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
• Thomas A Kempis (The Imitation of Christ)
• Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Sense & Sensibility ... etc)
• Arthur Schopenhauer (The world as will and Idea ... etc)
• Victor Hugo (Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame ..)
• Frank Herbert (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune ... etc)
• JRR Tolkein (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers...)

And so with Emerson, Charles Dickens, Soren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Kant - that I also encountered in humanities and philo studies- which were given higher emphasis in Ateneo over the commercial courses.

Thus, I became a voracious reader, a thirsty soul - and I chose reading as a past time over any other else like watching movies or television. The library was my chosen playground - and I could read, sleep and even eat there from dusk till dawn ...

I have not been in touched with E for more than a decade since then, but my affair with the books lingered on. But, thanks to facebook, I found him again last week and we made a reconnection. He is still with the university - has been Dean for awhile and now working in the administration.

I asked him for a new list to read and he gave me the following: Apparently they are all soul related, spiritual and maybe he sensed what I need at this point in time ...

Mitch Albom - Tuesday with Morrie

Thomas Moore - Soulmates, Care of Soul, Soul of Sex

M Scott Peck - Road less Travelled

Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture

Harold Kushner - When Bad Things Happen to Good People

James Redfield - Celestine Prophecy

Ken Gire - Windows of the Soul, Moments with the Savior

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I believe that people come into (and go out) of our lives for a purpose. Maybe it is to guide us. To give us some lessons. To challenge us. To make us think. To be our silent companion. To make us happy. To lead us to redemption.

I think I am into my reflective/meditative mood - very !!!