What We Learn

I have a very dear and beautiful friend that I was visiting frequently in an immigration detention center in New Jersey (who was deported yesterday). About a month ago, we were having a nice lengthy visit...those kind of moments where the conversation is so good and the person to whom you are conversing with so wonderful... that you forget time and space. At one point I asked him. "You've been here for months on end...is there something important that you have learned for yourself?" And, without hesitation, he looks to a little piece of scrap paper sitting (discarded) at the end of the table. And he says to me: "You see that little scrap of paper there? With that little scrap of paper I could write a little note to my two yeard old son...I could tell someone 'hey, its gonna be alright'...i could make a little drawing that might lift up someone's day. Then he said: "I'm here in the middle of pure deprivation and I've learned to take note of the tiniest details that I never paid any attention to before. I learned that everything matters."

(personal note: I can not even begin to express what this meant and means to me...I hope it means something for you as well. .....Para J.C.S. -no tengo palabras amigo mas querido....aparte de que te quiero bastante)