Paying it forward

It has been a year now since I lost my best friend, Major Raymond Wong. And a lot has changed.

For those who don’t know — Ray was someone I had known for over twenty years. More than half my life, and longer than I have known my wife.

He was a veterinarian, and a Major in the U.S. Army. None of that ever showed. He was humble beyond compare, helped anyone without a second thought, and was someone you could depend on. Always.

If you’ve ever lost someone important to you, you’ll know that the hardest part is trying to keep their memory alive. Something you can feel drifting, and are desperate to hold onto.

So this is part of trying to keep Ray here.

It is an awful silence when you lose someone you texted or talked to every single day. Sometimes you reach for your phone to shoot them a text, and realize a few seconds into the reaction that they are no longer there.

It is a strange feeling, and one I don’t wish on anyone.

I struggled at first with how to process it. But I came to a realization: he truly enjoyed his life. He was doing everything he wanted to be doing up until the end. And the most important part was that he helped people and made some truly big differences in their lives. Sometimes without even realizing it.

I only learned how much at his memorial, where I spoke, and strangers told me things I had never heard. At his military service, people described a man I only half knew.

So I took that on this year. I said yes to everyone.

Hundreds of people, in the end. Some needed help. Some just wanted to talk. A lot of them are friends now.

Ray’s gone but still here. This past year I’ve pushed myself further than I ever have — motivated by his memory. Thanks, Ray.

I did things well outside my comfort zone, things that made no sense on paper and had nothing in them for me. I released two songs. I started a podcast with a documentary filmmaker. I ended up advising on an initiative in Colombia. I was in the New York Times and on NPR, spent an afternoon with a Wall Street Journal reporter, and was featured in Times Square. Then I landed the job I had wanted for years.

They were dominoes. Take any one of them out and the rest of the line never falls. A conversation I almost didn’t make time for led to the next thing, and that led to the one after it, all the way to here.

I couldn’t have planned it and I wouldn’t know how to repeat it. But it wasn’t only luck. It happened because I kept saying yes to people who had nothing to give me back.

There is something particular about doing something good for someone without needing to record it, or get credit for it, or imagine it paying back somehow. It is something I believe people should do, and something I intend to keep doing — and to pass on to anyone who knows me or crosses paths with me.

Ray never told me about most of what he did for people. I found out afterwards, from strangers.

That’s the version of this I’d want you to take: help someone this week in a way that can’t come back to you. That’s all paying it forward has ever meant.

The world is a good place. We just need to choose to pay it forward.

Ray’s family set up a fundraiser in his memory. What is left over goes to a veterinary charity.