WHAT REALLY MATTERS

Julio César Sanabria & me in Puerto Rico

During my visit to Puerto Rico I had the chance to visit with old friends who mean a lot to me and have added a lot of cheer, joy, and value to my life. One of those old friends is my friend Julio César Sanabria. Julio César has an amazing story. He is an accomplished artist, singer of traditional Puerto Rican music, a lawyer, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Western Puerto Rico, and founder and president of his own event productions and artists’ promotion company in Puerto Rico, and he is only 31 years old. He has been a defendant of the Puerto Rican culture with all his heart and passion ever since he was a child, and has overcome a lot of adversity to become an icon of our culture and an economic leader.

Being everything that he is, Julio César is a very busy individual. He visited me in my house for about 5 minutes one afternoon, which meant a lot to me. The next day he invited me over to his house for dinner, which I accepted gladly and gratefully. There he cooked for me and then he said he wanted to focus on me and to hear everything that I was doing. After a few hours talking, he said to me that he could have worked or attended to his wide array of social events on that evening, but that he cancelled everything in his itinerary so he could be with me, as that is far more important than his professional commitments. He said that the moments spent with me were never coming back, and in realizing so he wanted to make the most out of our time together, even if it meant standing some other people up. His attention and devotion to me for those few hours made me feel very welcomed and our friendship highly appreciated. He reaffirmed a lesson that I had already learned as we lived that brief moment together that will stay in our hearts forever: that there are some things in life that are not worth putting on hold, such as showing our loved ones that we care deeply for them.

Life is full of challenges, commitments, appointments, agendas, and time structures to do almost everything. However, there is also a deadline to be met with our heart and our soul, and that one, although is the one that is put on hold most often, is the one that should not have to wait, at least not for too long. If not always, it is always comforting to attend to the matters of the heart, as those are the ones that matter the most. The extrinsic in our lives will always be there, as long as we make the life the way it is. We can not, though, let the intrinsic die of malnutrition and neglect, as that is the meaning of our existence. So lets all take time on a regular basis to be appreciative of ourselves, of others, and of all things that otherwise we would take for granted. Lets make a date periodically with ourselves and with the people we care about to show our commitment, passion, love, interest, and joy for having one another. The rest will wait.