THE NARRATIVE ARC
My Friend Made Millions and All I Got Was Inner Peace
Love your fate — even if it costs you dearly
Arthur wasn’t this heavy when I last saw him
Then again, neither was I. A few years back in a bar in Chilliwack, BC, where he offered me a job. Me with one foot already out of the door, the plane ticket not yet booked, but my heart irrevocably set on leaving.
Even more water under the bridge since we first met. Almost twenty years since we started working at the same company together, both of us little more than kids. He’s not even forty yet; I only passed that milestone a couple of years ago.
A few weeks ago, he came stumbling out of a Barcelona hotel, long ash-blond hair bouncing around his shoulders, a grin on his bearded face.
“What a night,” he said, dropping his single bag in the back of my crappy car.
Across the street, two Spanish girls giggled together as they waved him goodbye. And I climbed behind the wheel of the car, driving us away from the outskirts of Barcelona, toward the French border, toward my home.
It wasn’t a great job that we had twenty years ago, me and him. But at the time, it was the best I ever had. It wasn’t the manual…
