Sometime last week I read on Multiply a friend’s plea for help.  Actually, ‘friend’ would be a stretch; I just knew him from high school as the dude who’s the friend of a friend.  We were never classmates, and unless I’m mistaken, we’ve never even had a conversation about anything substantial.  But being the friendly dude that he was, he’s kindly added me on every social network that we both were on.  On the Internet, a friend is a friend, right?

He’s taking up engineering, about to graduate in a few months, by the way, and is experiencing one hell of an anxiety attack.  He’s torn because engineering was never really his dream but here he was about to enter “the real world” with an engineering degree under his belt.  He’s always wanted to become a photographer and had dreamt of becoming a freelance photojournalist for National Geographic, a job that he wanted to do in his peak years.

I was about to dismiss said message but there it was, tagged onto the message, like it was an afterthought: “Please help me.  I’d very much like to hear your thoughts on this and anyway, I’d know that you’ve looked here because of the viewing history”.  I don’t know why but I spent five minutes typing out my opinion on the matter: that I went through the same thing during my senior year of college.  The urge to shift to a journalism course basically made me miserable, and I ended up wasting my last years of schooling mourning for what could have been.

After graduation and taking the local board exams everything became murkier; I still wanted to pursue a career in writing but knew that without the proper tools I’d end up nowhere.  Also thoughts about Med. School started popping up, as having an M.D. after my name had been a childhood dream.  And of course there was still nursing, my chosen course.  But then after the results of the local board exams were released, things began to clear up.  I’d like to say that my prayers for enlightenment had been answered, but religiosity was lost on me at the time. 

I ended up taking the least favorite of my choices because, apparently, that was where God willed me to go.  Who knows, right?  After all the kicking and screaming and biting this course may very well lead me to a path where I can help less fortunate people like my cousins.  At least that’s what I’m holding to right now.

So yeah, my message to him was a tad long and it was just something that I didn’t take too seriously.  I mean he had other friends; they were bound to give him clearer advice than I did because they knew him more than I did.

Imagine my surprise when I checked my inbox one morning and saw that he’d sent me a private message, telling me that he really appreciated my message.  To say that I was deeply touched is an understatement. 

I’ve quite forgotten how our tiny little actions can affect other people’s lives.  These actions maybe mere pebbles to us but they can cause immense ripples for somebody else, after all.