Thirty days ago I woke up, went to work, and like so many other days for the last three and a half years, started my day by feeling guilty for an emptiness inside of me despite what is an otherwise charmed life. I have everything a human being would ever need to be happy. An affordable apartment in a building that's home to people that are my friends in a neighborhood I am proud to call home. A job that pays me well to do good.  An education and a past littered with the kinds of encounters that make me question how it is that one person could have had as much good fortune as have I. 

I have a loving, supportive family and I have had the opportunity to live in many places and to be a part of many, many people's lives. I have had a life that, if viewed from almost any angle, has been blessed. And a little over a month ago, despite all of the opportunity in my life, I was staring at a computer screen wondering again at what point exactly I had given up or if it was that I could no longer consider myself an authentic person regardless of what anyone thought or what anyone told me. And then two things happened that led me to writing this to all of you.

On Monday, March 16th, while browsing the news online, I read of a student that had been playing a pick-up soccer game with a few of his friends. He died shortly thereafter. That night, reading about the vigil in his honor, I was struck by their saying that they'd lost "one of their own." I felt like I had, too, even though I'd never met him. I work with students his age and it felt close to home. He was 19 years old. Ten years younger than me. There has been so much life in those ten years.

The next morning I received an email from a friend with the word "teardrop" in the subject line. In the body of the email was one question- "Will you get to go before it closes?" I leaped to the conclusion that he was referring to the abandoned train station in Oakland, which we'd both wanted to see as we'd found pictures online of the interior. When I opened up the link, my heart broke. The Parkway Theater was closing. I looked out the window and I began to expect more to go wrong. I sat there - silent, waiting for it.

Six years ago, I moved west from one love affair with New York City to another with a young woman that had decided to return to her family and friends in the bay area. I'd never spent any time here though many of my closest friends from college had returned to the area after graduation to be closer to their families and to start a life in San Francisco. In my first couple of months, I was feeling very homesick and incredibly lost.  I didn't love San Francisco like I'd loved New York. It also didn't cause me pain like New York had. It was a mixed blessing and difficult to adjust. As I struggled to find my place, I also struggled to maintain a relationship that was fracturing under the pressure of my having moved across the country for it and practically nothing else. One day, she decided to show me around Lake Merritt thinking that I would like it and I remember it was like breathing after having been under water for too long. "It reminds me of Brooklyn," I said. When I looked up, out of the window of her old, pale blue Volvo, the street sign read "Brooklyn Ave." 

I wouldn't attend my first movie at the Parkway Theater for a while after that, but I remember being told that day what it was, that it existed, and feeling satisfied and curious in a way that two years later would lead me back to the neighborhood at the end of what was a several-months long apartment hunt in San Francisco. Owners were crossing out the cost and writing "best offer." I grew tired. And one night, pouring over Craigslist ads, I remembered that day by the lake, and that theater where you could get a slice of pizza and a beer and sit in a couch while watching a movie. That's where I wanted to live.  In a place where people supported something like that. Within an hour I'd found a listing for an apartment that had no picture attached yet mentioned that the person moving wanted someone specific to fill the space she loved so much. Someone "interested in social justice, education, and children." I had to reply. So I wrote her a story about being lost and following love to the other side of the country. A week later, I was signing the checks on the deposit for the apartment in which I'm sitting now, writing this to all of you.

Some nights it was with friends. There would be a phone call or an email. We're going to the Parkway to see a movie. Or I'd pass by on my way home from work and stop to read the sheets on the glass doors listing upcoming shows. I'd run home, change, and walk down to cozy up to a couch and a glass of beer and an old movie that I hadn't seen since I was a child. In the winter, when the furnace blew, they passed out blankets.  Year after year, I would describe my neighborhood with the Parkway as its focal point.  "You know the Parkway Theater?" I'd ask. "I live two blocks from it."  I always felt a swell of pride to say it. It was my home and it was Oakland and I loved telling people about it.

The Fischers, the owners, obviously loved that place. Their patrons loved it as much as they did. And when it was announced that it was closing its doors, it hit this community like a death in the family. We lost one of our own the day the Parkway closed its doors and sitting there at my computer feeling sorry for myself I realized that if I didn't do anything, if I didn't try to do something, to stand up, to fight for what I love and to find the people that want to stand up with me; if I didn't start right there with following through with making good on the cliches I've used to populate my life, then what could I say about what I'd done to honor the memory of a 19-year old boy that suddenly lost his chance to ever see another movie, or swim in another lake, or dive into the ocean, or come of age to drink a beer with his friends? What could I say about what I had done to honor the memory of the thing that had steadily held together the attention of the community that makes up this place I call home? I realized that what had crept into every part of my being was a cynicism that had infected everything I believed and had begun to taint every last one of my actions. All of them. Everything was begun with the idea in mind that something would go wrong or it wouldn't work or people wouldn't care. I realized that I was sitting in front of a computer spending my time thinking about what I had lost rather than using my time to create what I would gain. 

With one email, one month ago, I have found the heart of what the Parkway was, and that is people. I have found them in the most unlikely places and in most cases, they were there all along. What began as one email one month ago, has spawned into an organization of some of the most committed, hard-working, thoughtful, and grateful people I have ever met. It wasn't until the Parkway closed that I was able to begin to see what it had fostered and what it continues to represent even in the wake of its closure. A community. So we have worked day and night to bring everyone back together, not just to reopen a theater, which we will do, but to show everyone each other's faces, to give everyone a chance to hear each other's voices. To prove that even though we all will not know one another, we are connected, and as a consequence, so is our well-being. And the proof is, and continues to be, in the proving, in the relationships formed, and it does not need to stop when the theater opens its doors to all of us again. We can make this last if we commit to the idea that it is easier for us to succeed and to pursue happiness if we know that we're rooting for one another. We're proving that if we work together, our lives will be rich, and full, because our time is limited and what we have is what we make of it.

We have gained the support of The Lake Merritt Business Owners Association,Pat Kernighan, Rebecca Kaplan, Oaklandish, Zennie Abraham, The Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, KALX, KALW, and thousands of our fellow residents. We have the landlord's support. We've got work yet to do in order to put together all the necessary pieces that are required in revitalizing the space. A large part of this is hearing from the community about what is wanted and our learning how to communicate that to the right people at the right time. This is what we're doing and we've got room for improvement.  We can't improve if we don't reach out to everyone and we need people to help us do this.

Neighborhood bbq/potluck: This Sunday, April 26- 1:00 p.m.  Please come, bring some food, and meet each other.  We'll be letting people know more about the details of what we've accomplished, closing the raffle we've organized to help support the laid off employees, and explaining how more people can get involved.

I will not give up if you don't.

Please join us. We can make Oakland stronger, together. Visit www.iliketheparkway.com

Peter Prato is a Senior Coach for InsideTrack. He is also a community activist, writer, and photographer. For more, please go to peterprato.com