I started crying. Damn it.
He started crying. Oh God. Now what? There was nowhere to go. I was stuck. Guess he was too.
I wasn’t crying hysterically. But crying nonetheless. I remember reading Fault In Our Stars and crying on a flight to Thailand. Who does that? A grown man crying on an airplane reading a teen book. I was probably in a middle seat as well.
I mean, I don’t cry much. Only when I think my life is a wack job or if I get really drunk. Or both.
Anyway, we were sitting in a deserted airport lobby about to board a plane that might have been built when Jesus was a teenager. A small, lonely place. I had only known this dude for a few months. Hell, I had only hung out with him a handful of times.
We were somewhere in West Africa. An area of the world that is part disaster and part disaster. Worn out, brutally hot, and desperate. The armpit of Africa where travel is impossible, the air is sticky, and the bananas are sweet as pie. Paradise for me. Hell for him.
So, we sat.
To pass the time, we started talking about our dads.
He loved his father very much. They had been planning loads of adventures together when his dad retired. Travel adventures where they would finally get some time together. For years the two of them would dream about the places they would go, the things they would see, the time they would spend together.
Finally, after decades of work, his dad retired. A few days later, a diagnosis out of the blue. A few months later, gone.
The adventures never happened. The dreams never came true. Their time together was confined to a hospital room.
Tears fell down his face as he told me the story. Mine too.
Both our dads, dead. His of cancer, mine of cheap vodka and broken dreams.
A few months prior, I had randomly seen him in a coffee shop in Atlanta. I was writing in my journal trying to figure out my life when I saw him walk in. I knew it was him because he always dresses like he is going to a middle school dance. Fancy jacket, fun tie, colorful pants.
He got his coffee and headed over to say hello. After some small talk, he asked…
“Is there any chance you would want to go to West Africa? I know that is a dumb question, and you probably don’t, but…”
Did this dude, who I had only met twice before, just ask me to go to West Africa with him?
Yes.
I said it quickly without thinking. Then I wondered if that would be the worst decision of my life. I knew nothing about him except he was super smart, loved travel, and had extremely white teeth.
A few months later we met at the Atlanta airport and boarded a flight to Ghana. We would be spending a month traveling across West Africa. I hoped we would get along. I hoped I made the right choice. I hoped we wouldn’t get murdered, kidnapped, Ebola, or eaten by cannibals.
I don’t know if it was in that small airport lobby when we became best friends. Or maybe in one of the taxis or boats or airplanes or rickshaws or motorbikes or immigration offices we suffered in across the world.
It might have been when we fed chickens to crocodiles in Burkino Faso, when I got malaria in Somalia, or when we somehow avoided death racing back to a secure compound at night in the streets of South Sudan. I don’t know where we became best friends, but we did.
I often beat myself up for not being a good friend. I feel like I’m not good at giving gifts, making time, or communicating. I know I need to be better.
But it’s hard for me.
He told me that when his dad died he realized he should have never waited. So, he set a new goal. A goal to go to every country in the world. I was lucky enough to be beside him for 50 or so. I was also lucky to be with him in Italy when he completed his goal.
All 197 countries.
Yes.
But I was even more lucky that I said yes to a new best friend. Someone who inspires me to say yes to life. To say yes to outrageous goals. To say yes to big dreams and yes to doing them now instead of saying yes someday.
Happy Birthday, Garrett Gravesen. You have seen the world and made it a better place. You have made the people around you better people. You have done all the things and keep saying…
Yes.
I know your dad is saying hell yes from the other side as he delights watching you live your life of adventure.
Keep saying yes to life, setting outrageous goals, and living with courage because it reminds us to do the same.
And for the rest of us…
One word, three letters: Yes.
Trey
Follow Garrett and his adventures: https://www.garrettgravesen.com/
Oh, and quit crying in airports, you pansy.