Meant To Be (Part I)

The bus ground slowly along the dirt road, and then stopped completely.  “Oh no, we’re lost.” I said outwardly, in jest.  Several wedding guests turned and looked at me with anxious smiles, unsure if I was joking.  I checked my phone’s clock.  The music was scheduled to begin in twelve minutes, and the odds of us arriving in-time for the ceremony were falling by the second.  I glanced out of my window at the verdant farmland rolling away from us, then looked at my phone again to check the map.

There’s still time…

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When my friend Art shot me a message saying he was engaged I told him to hang on for a second so I could look outside to see if things were beginning to freeze up.  The truth however, is that I always knew he had it in him, and I knew that he knew he did, too.  When that right person comes into your life, you feel it not just in your heart, but in your bones, and it’s like fireworks on the fourth of July.  Every day.

The second truth about his announcement was that I already knew he was engaged.  I’d been getting bombarded for weeks with questions about the situation.  And as anyone who has been friends with this man for long enough can attest, very little information had been made available.  “Did you hear the news about Art?”  Shrug.  “When is the wedding? ” Shrug. “Where is the wedding?”  Shrug.  “Are you in the wedding?”  Shrug. “What’s her name?” Shrug.  “Do you even know who he’s marrying?”  Shrug.

My stoic responses to these well-intentioned questions were often viewed as indifferent — snarky, even.  But when you know someone well enough, you don’t need answers.  When you know someone well enough, you already have all the information you need.

Art and I met in college and with so much in common we quickly hit it off.  Music, sports, games, parties, and the most amazing debates.  Sometimes we’d take sides we didn’t even stand for, just to be able to debate with each other.  Like a scene out of Good Will Hunting, we ruthlessly challenged each other’s positions, demanding sources for the salvos of quotes and statistics we tossed, pinning pawns and backing each other into intellectual corners, hacking away the overgrowth of lies until the truth was finally exposed:  Yeah, I’ve got nothing.  Then we’d slap each other on the back, cheers our beers, and rest up for the next round.  It never got old.

Partygoers would insert themselves into our animated discussions thinking they’d found a socially comfortable place and quickly find themselves burned.  It wasn’t that they were any less intelligent or knowledgeable — many were so much moreso in that regard.  They just didn’t know how to argue.   They didn’t know how NOT to take it personally.  You could watch it happen in real-time — their arms would cross, faces would flush, lips would purse, eyes would water, and eventually they’d pop.  Sometimes these exercises would take minutes, but like most skirmishes they were often over in seconds.

This tomfoolery carried into our post-college lives as well.  I’d attempt to shoo away colleagues, players of office politics, pointing my finger at the guy with the gleaming eyes and bloodthirsty smile.  “Come back after you have some more experience”, I’d caution.  Some would listen and survive another day, but most would not.  Many men and women were lost in the ensuing maelstrom, clinging helplessly to their sinking positions, shredded values dangling from the rigging, expressions of fear, uncertainty, and doubt frozen on their tear-strewn faces.  Realizing their mistakes, they’d turn to me for help.  I’d simply shrug and say, “Swim or die.”

The awesome thing is that some did manage to swim.  Over the years an eclectic group of friends assembled that rivaled the integrity of the tightest SEAL platoon.  People of different backgrounds, abilities, orientations, beliefs, religions, and creeds.  People willing to pour out their hearts and bear their souls.  People able to back up what they believed in, who knew what they stood for.  People you could talk to, open yourself up to.  People you could trust.  People you could really, truly love.  Over the years we’ve floated in and out, sometimes active, sometimes under a rock, but always a piece of us carried in the hearts of everyone else, swimming along with the group, never really gone.

And so when asked if I knew who Art was marrying, if I thought she was made of the right stuff, if she “could swim”, I just shrugged.  Because knowing Art, this girl not only could swim, she could swim the English Channel.  She could swim the Mississippi River.  She could swim the Atlantic Ocean.  She could swim the entire planet.  Blindfolded.  Twice.

No, the question that had been plaguing me for months wasn’t “Can she swim?” That question was easy enough to answer.  That question was the minimum bar.  The bouncer at the door.  The hard question wasn’t about form at all. The hard question was about fit.  To know if Bailey (she has a name) was truly the *right* person for Art — to know if their union was truly meant to be —  we’d need a signal.  We’d need to leave the confines of provable science and enter the mystical, spooky realm of quantum entanglement in order to find a sign that these two hearts were truly destined to join together as one.

And we were almost out of time.