Farewell To You, My Friend

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He was a real genius. He never finished college, yet, he could beat even the smartest college guy in the neighborhood. That was because he was a bookworm--he loved books too much he literally ate them, the ideas in the books, I mean. He was good at everything: writing poems, doing science experiments, exploring uncharted forests, book discussions, logic, algebra and trigonometry, and others. He even let us see Mars, Venus, and Pluto through his telescope. I became his best friend, though I was then only 13 and he was in his early twenties. He talked to me about highly intelligent things. I marveled in awe, mouth agaped, though I didn't understand a thing he said. He stopped awhile in the middle of his exhortation, looked at me, and then smiled. He patted my head. "You're still very young, my friend," he said. But he found me a good listener. So he liked going to my place almost daily to talk about intellectual things, though he knew I could barely cope up. He was my first instructor in Karate. He was a first dan black belt. He would drop by our house to check on my Karate form and correct me. After a year, he said I was good enough to be a first dan black belt myself. Later, though, he began asking me really weird questions. They where about God. Did He really exist? What's the meaning of life? Why does man exist? I couldn't give him any answer. I myself was at a loss. All I could think of was that, I didn't have to ask those questions. I just had to believe. "You shouldn't just believe without asking questions," he told me. "You should know the whys of life!" I didn't know at that time that those were his farewell questions to me. In my young age, I never realized that a person could be so serious about such questions as to take his own life! I was the one who identified him at the morgue--his family was too shocked to do it. I was too young to grasp it all. I just ran to our backyard later and secretly wept there. I realized that I was never going to see my friend again. Today, having my own wife and kids, I look back and still remember my friend's face and voice. "You shouldn't just believe and not ask questions about life!" But now I know better. It's better to just enjoy life, whatever circumstances come. Questions are never going to change anything, anyway. But faith will.