I had a few drinks last night and stayed up till about 2am, eating jerk chicken and re-watching episodes of ‘Breaking Bad’. When that 5 am alarm went off, I was not with it. Fuck it, snoozed for another hour…

6 am alarm went off, still not with it, but fuck it let’s do it, no time to waste. I sluggishly withdrew my dehydrated body off the bed and went straight for that cool, heavenly, aquatic essence that opened up my soul as soon as it cradled itself onto my parched tongue. Got the coffee pot going. Relieved myself as the first order of business of any day. Then I knew what I needed to do. Go for a run.

“Fuck, really? Run? Now?”

“Yes nigga. Run. NOW.”

“Dude it’s cold out there.”

“Wear a jacket.”

“But like, the air is cold, and what if I get sick. No, no, no. It’s probably better to do it later, once the sun is up and the air is a little warmer and all that.”

“-_- … You’re not going to get sick, pussy.”

“Okay but, I’m really dehydrated from last night, soo, I don’t…”

“Drink water.”

“But…”

“NOW!”

“Ugghh…Fine.”

I put my clothes on and tied my sneakers with all the enthusiasm of the most dejected office clerk. Grabbed my keys, opened the door, went down the stairs. Step, by step, by step. Literally just, going…through…the motions.

I got to the track and reluctantly got it popping. One lap turned into two, two into three, three into four, etc. etc. Okay this is not so fucking bad. Hit the park, finished my workout. Now I’m feeling fucking great.

I start walking home and on the way I find a brown skinned South American woman standing on the sidewalk, looking lost and confused, with a piece of paper and phone in her hand. Instinctively as I walk by her I ask if she needs help. She asks in broken English if I speak Spanish, I gladly respond, “Si.”

She goes on to explain that she is looking for an address. She just got a job and it’s her first day, but she can’t find the damn place. I look at the address that she was given and realize that she is on the wrong street, a simple error due to the one letter difference in street names. No reason to panic though, this other street is just a few blocks away I explain to her. She tries to pull up the GPS on her phone, but doesn’t know how quite to use it. I kindly ask if I can use her phone to show her. I then pull up the right address, show her the navigation, and give her explicit directions. Make a right here, left after one block, another right after five blocks and you should find it there. She smiles, truly content with the advice she was given, says thank you and hurries away to get to her first day of work on time.

Of course, I feel good about this encounter, I just helped somebody. But then I wonder, back to a post I wrote a week ago that noted, “Everyone on this planet is connected to everyone else…Everything you do, no matter how small, affects all those around you in ways you can and cannot see…” True indeed I thought. What if I never put my shoes on? What if I let sheer laziness get the best of me and never forced myself to get up this morning and go for that run? Surely, I would have never met this woman. Never had an opportunity to help her get to her first day of work. What if she never made it? Or arrived too late? Could she have lost the job simply because I refused to run? Who knows how many children and family members depend on her, depend on her finding this job. Of course, some would say, “Well, someone else probably would have helped her anyway.” That’s quite a possibility, but it is not a certainty. What is a certainty is that she and I crossed paths, and me deciding to go for that run was critical to us crossing those paths. That is a fact, while the possibility of someone else helping her while I laid in my warm bed is mere speculation. The matter is this, there’s this idea that has been pervading my mind as of late. I realize that the Universe keeps trying to tell me something and I would be a fool to ignore it.

Doing the best for yourself, no matter how hard, puts you in the proper position to do the best for others. Don’t ever forget. This is not about you.