It seems remarkable to me, but when my brother’s cell phone refused to work for the second time in a week, we needed a lot of technology to get it going again. And in the process, we talked to a help-line stranger more than 8000 miles away, we heard roosters crowing near him there in the Philippines, and we got a tiny glimpse of the terror of trying to escape a tall building during a major earthquake. We heard him say a few brief words about what matters most in life, and because of his tech skills, even from that distance he got my brother’s phone up and running too.
My brother and I were seated at the table with his stubborn phone, my laptop, and my phone in front of us. Two devices working, one not at all. On the laptop we viewed many screens of information from his phone company, looking for a help line telephone number, but no luck. We did eventually find a place to request a call from the company, and in a minute or two we were speaking on my phone to a gentleman from the other side of the world. We didn’t know that yet.
He needed to perform some tech world gymnastics to help us. First of all, with my phone and my laptop, all the logins were wrong for my brother’s account. Turns out there’s a way to work around that without me having to log out of everything myself. Our tech wizard taught us how.
Early on in the conversation, we thought we heard a rooster crowing. My brother and I looked at each other but made no comment. There were a good number of tech stages to go through to get his phone back online, and along the way the rooster and some of the rooster’s friends chimed in occasionally in the background. Re-enter your password, our helper might say, and roosters would start crowing again somewhere near him.
The fellow was clear and patient, and things started going well with the reboot. But my brother and I were still wondering about the roosters. So my brother said, “Can I ask a personal question? It seems like we’re hearing a rooster . . .”
Our helper said, “Yes, there’s been a 6.9 earthquake near the Philippines, and we don’t know if it’s safe to go back into the buildings yet. We’re not in our normal offices.”
More roosters fretting and crowing in the background. I remembered that these boisterous critters run loose in some places on the planet, maybe especially in the tropics.
My brother asked if his family was okay.
“Yes, but it was terrifying to make our way down the stairs from the 9th floor as the earthquake struck, not knowing if the building would fall while we were still in it. And now there has been a second earthquake, a 6.1 . . .”
My brother expressed concern about the days and weeks ahead. The fellow’s reply from the other side of the world was one of those times when I wish I had written down someone’s exact words. In just a sentence or two, he said eloquently something very very roughly like this:
“We people of the Philippines have confidence in our deepest shared values. We are committed to each other, we have faith, and we will work through this.”
All the while, stopping and starting, the sound of roosters, roosters, roosters.
So there he was, 8000 miles away, doing an excellent job at work, living in a different landscape than I grew up in, but seeking safety, community, meaning, expertise, service, courtesy. Just what I would hope for in life myself.
But the phone call felt exotic to me. No, not the roosters or the difference in our spoken accents. The idea that a person could open up and speak about his values, sure that doing so would be respected, even by strangers, sure that the people around him there were on the same page. That feels exotic.
Music: "Good Morning Good Morning" by The Beatles
