On Community: part two

The value of each, and the power of one

Note: This is a LONG piece; it could be no other way. Please be sure to read it in the app.

The sometimes remarkable nature of the cliché

I met my husband at work, and fell in love with him—immediately; no questions asked. He was it; he was The One.

Have you heard that one before? No; me either. Put a thick pin in this one, though, and take the opportunity to grab a snack for the read ahead. I assure you it gets interesting.

Here’s where my story is different, and I intuit that when you find yourself in the midst of your future community, it will become something of your story, too.

I didn’t exactly know what I saw in him, but I saw something. That’s my modus operandi: I see things in people. I pick-up on goodness, on fervency; I detect potential. (Real potential; not just all the positive aspects about which I fantasize while glossing over the truth in front of me. I’ve honed that discernment over the years.) I ignore anything and everything I infer about them, and I read them. I scan their body language; I evaluate the sincerity of their voice, and the way their movements and inflection distract from or underscore what they’re saying. The signal radiates through their eyes; they truly are the windows of the soul. In the most dualistic way it can be applied, I’m a firm believer in Maya Angelou’s words: “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” For good; for ill.

Like all good advice in life, the message is so simple when distilled; it belies the Herculean difficulty of living it.

Our greatest social sin in the modern era (and there are many) is, as I noted in part one, our propensity to shuffle individuals into groups with ascribed characteristics that exist only in our imaginations. Our second-greatest sin is the hypocrisy that then unfolds when we perceive ourselves as pristine, and everyone else as slightly (or greatly) tainted; when we allow our true selves to bifurcate far away from the way we perceive ourselves. As a result, we allow this split to infect our views of others as we likewise allow it to whitewash our self-image. We’re great; everyone else has the problem. We can engage them; we can save them, but only if our hands don’t get dirty. We can convert them to our proper way of thinking, judging, and ultimately: living. From a safe distance, of course.

Hypocrisy frankly seems to be the root of our problems nowadays, and it’s a taproot that reaches to the core of the Earth.

It is only when depart our sofa-thrones and our armchairs, sweat-drenched from the toil of adamant quarterbacking, that we take to the messy skies of Real Life, wherein we discover that we are simultaneously beautiful, wise, ugly, and stupid. All are present in proportion, and what we need to begin balancing the scales is to first spend serious time with ourselves…and then fully invest in someone else, since—done right, and if we’re being sincere—it forces us to show our work regarding what we’ve learned about our own natures. In so doing, we discover additional true and false parts, and we have someone else with whom we can compare notes. We gain a second set of eyes to help figure out if the road ahead is a good one, a dead-end, or littered with screws and nails.

So: I did.

The curious road to redemption—for both of us

At this point, you might be thinking that I sound like a real treat to date, wherein every other person is some grand cause and great experiment, and I’m positioning myself as some sort of gracious benefactor. First off: I don’t take that position, because I’m ugly and stupid in degrees, remember? I figured that out (along with the good parts) when I spent time by and with myself. Second, the circumstances of this romance were not exactly pedestrian.

Yes, I fell in love with my future-husband the moment he walked in the room and set it alight with his inimitable je ne sais quoi. However, both of us were at the low end of the greatness scale at that point in our lives.

I was a devout, toxic people-pleaser in the midst of a divorce, and was at the midpoint of an intense voyage of self-discovery that was rightly mine alone to experience. He was just entering into both said voyage and divorce. Both of us had previously picked the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and had failed to immerse ourselves in the hard work of exploring ourselves as we properly cherished the other person, flaws and all. We failed to find opportunities to continually find the other person engaging and interesting, while figuring out what was true, engaging, and interesting about us. Instead of realizing that situations and reactions perpetuated superficiality and bad decision-making, we ascribed the failures to our spouses. They had the problem. They were unreasonable. They needed to get with the program. We could justify ourselves, our reasons, and our actions to the moon and back, no matter how perverse they’d become; our partners were twits who didn’t have a leg to stand on.

To be clear, they had flaws and issues; so did we—obviously. What we lacked in our relationships was the investment in and appreciation of each other to navigate the boogery parts together, so the problems compounded and the walls between us and our spouses went ever-higher. Eventually we were just roommates living together; caretakers, breadwinners, and reactive problem-solvers paired with people who apparently weren’t. It went about as well as well as you’d expect. Actually: it went worse.

I came home one afternoon, months after delivering the “I want a divorce” proclamation, wherein events had—for the most part—unfolded fairly amicably. I discovered half the stuff in the house was missing, including the Crock Pot (son of a bitch), along with my soon-to-be ex-husband. For all that was lost, I’d gained an email, indicating that he was ready to play hardball over everything. Nice. Also: my computer’s hard drive crashed later that day, and my spare laptop’s motherboard died. This was fine; this was good. The universe’s ability to deliver a message that cannot be ignored is unparalleled.

I did what any self-respecting, others-ignorant people-pleaser would do when the house of cards came crashing down around them: I felt sorry for myself, went outside, and smoked-up a pack of cigarettes. More than that, however, I realized that my true and imaginary selves had drifted miles apart, not even able to see each other waving in the distance. I started to retrace all the ways I’d engineered the hell in which I now resided.

As time went by, I sprinkled copious time alone with dating other people, since I figured this was what balance looked like. They were terrible people, because I was still a terrible person, and thus we were perfect for each other...at least, in terms of the roles we would play in each other’s stories. I tended to most strongly attract the most shattered people; souls rich with charisma and “game,” but lacking the wherewithal to steer their own ships. We were so many passengers, searching for the captains to steer us to salvation. An amalgamation of idiots does not yield collective genius, so together we were spectacularly disastrous. On the bright side, I learned how to set boundaries and decide when enough was enough. Eventually, I realized that I’d been hovering at “enough” for quite some time, and I was in no proper shape to be involving myself with anyone else until I addressed the extraordinary mess that was me.

For my husband, a lifetime of people-pleasing and basing his own self-worth and self-image upon the assessments and validation of others yielded not only a failed marriage, but also prison time. As it turns out, it’s incredibly expensive to maintain an image and keep other people impressed, when all you believe they value is your utility and the perception of your success. Instead of working together to enrich their lives with what they enjoyed doing together, everything simply became an escalation of acquisition. More and more, always increasing; never an end in sight. Money indeed cannot buy happiness, when happiness is a projection rather than a state of mind. The best way to win such a game is, as paraphrased from Joshua in WarGames, never to play; the best method for veering from the cliff is to address the meat of the matter head-on.

It’s the familiar tale: we all have a list a mile long of things we know we need to do and are definitely going to do...tomorrow. Someday. Maybe...assuredly never, until we’re forced to, by the sweet-spot of the swinging bat of the universe. We have the best of intentions; we just never get around to manifesting them, because reasons. (Attention? Discernment? Focus? Time? You know—the stuff I write about in my “stepping back from technology” articles.)

One thing you can count on: you can work on issues incrementally, or deal with them all at once with a metaphorical or literal gun to your head, as the curated but inevitable collapse unfolds. Feel free to determine your preferences.

Julia Roberts has left the building

So, you see, this is not the lead-in for another rom-com: we met at work when he was an inmate already incarcerated. (If this sounds crazy, do some research and learn how many businesses and organizations make use of the labor of those incarcerated. Paying pennies on the dollar for labor while sidestepping worker’s compensation coverage makes for an impressively sustainable workforce.)

Another aspect of falling in love with someone incarcerated is the automatic denial of crutches that otherwise can be used to accelerate and artificially inflate relationships. Dress to impress? One of you will be a vision in orange, festooned with Velcro and elastic galore. The other will be wearing whatever’s allowable in terms of prescribed colors and fitment, with no metallic embellishments. Suck in that gut, because you’re not going to hide it with a belt, nor a corset. Sex on the first date? Not happening. Years will pass before you find out what the fun bits look like. Texting cute messages filled with hearts and flowers just to stay in touch? No such thing. You might get one fifteen-minute phone call per day, and you pay for the privilege while the person in orange has to push the buttons—if circumstances allow. Bad day? Hopefully you can talk about it tomorrow, if the phone rings, I guess. A gift of chocolates on your pillow? Not from someone who just netted four bucks for a full day’s work, but who still has to pay medical copays and market price for food and supplies, if whatever just crawled off the cafeteria tray looks unappealing. Instead, you get to supplement their existence. Time together? Sure! As much as the facility permits, and assuming they don’t cancel it. Also, enjoy getting your car searched occasionally (German shepherds occasionally have dirty feet), and the fact that your rights extend—as a private citizen—exactly as far as an inmate’s. In any situation of mutual encounter, the lowest common denominator dictates the terms. The only benefit you get is the ability to leave—and trust, it’s a fantastic benefit.

By the way: I’m not appealing to your sense of anything, here. You’re entitled to feel about crime and punishment as you will; I’m laying out the boundaries of what could be expected, and hoped for. I’m also not implying you should intentionally seek-out someone incarcerated to date. Two stars; would not recommend.

I’m saying you should pay attention to everyone you meet, and don’t judge the book by its cover. (Or, uh, the library in which it’s housed, I suppose.)

Well, anyhow: those were the terms. What, then, could we do, to make the best use of our time, other than rabidly fantasize about a future yet-unformed that was years away?

We could write, and get to know each other gradually, the way people apparently did it when email, texts, sexts, and apps weren’t a thing. So, we did: to the tune of—we counted—two thousand-plus pages, double-sided; 50% were typewritten and single-spaced. We had a lot to say. Our correspondence filled the average file box end-to-end. (I’m sure it provided a nice serial to follow for the mail room and administration, too.)

Little of it was utilitarian; most was epic in its scope and depth. The transparency was turned-up to eleven; the vulnerability eventually arrived, like the friend who doesn’t really want to go to the party, but knows they really have no choice. Our letters and cards exposed our assumptions and invited fresh thinking. We waxed rhapsodic upon our failings, and glossed poetic about all that we loved about each other. We also occasionally turned cold and banged our heads against the wall when one of us did something obnoxious or inscrutable. (A lack of correspondence can serve as a deafening silence.)

We made art and little craft projects to send to each other, since they were the only materials allowed to travel between worlds, besides letters and money (although the latter had a decidedly unidirectional flow).

We were very definitely invested in each other—utterly maxed-out on skin in the game, to the point that the only analogue might be an arranged marriage, although each of us was equally free to bail-out and deal with the consequences should we so choose. When you’re two ineffable fuck-ups who have mandatory years to sort yourselves out—while accepting the constraints of limited time together with zero ability to derail the process via manufactured distractions—you can cover a lot of territory with near-perfect sincerity. After all, neither of you harbors any illusions about what a mess you both are—and there’s no point in downplaying the negatives with each other. They stick out like the proverbial whore in church.

The more time was made available for visitation, the more we seized the opportunity and mastered the art of wringing every ounce of meaning from it. I seldom (and I mean rarely) missed the chance for a visit. It got to the point that we were spending fourteen hours a week with each other, and I was becoming a pro at navigating various hurdles to make it happen, including leveraging Google Maps routes that took me through back-alleys (and once, I’d swear, someone’s backyard) to reach the main road to the prison, because if you were late you weren’t getting in. I’d cook, portion, pack, and prepare food for special visits like a laboratory scientist, following every rule addressing container size and shape requirement. Food became a love language with a revolutionary patina, because it was normally terrible or sourced from vending machines when it wasn’t a special visit. Thus, one could not phone it in with McDonald’s on such a rare occasion.

Basically: we were forced to date and grow together the way people used to—slowly, and with many constraints. We had the ability to fully invest in each other, but no ability to obsess over each other. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us spend all our time together, and there was no sneaking out at night. As it turns out, that model still works—it works really well. So well, in fact, that we got married—a year before he came home. Why? Because we mutually arrived at the point where failure was not an option, and we were committed to whatever would come—together.

You want maximum results? Find someone worth maximum investment, and invest: steadily. Incrementally. Reliably. In yourself, and in each other. Rinse, and repeat. The end.

Not The End, though. Because once you adopt that method and those values for yourself, the universe sends other things your way.

The paths that merge

Yes, my husband was incarcerated, but we had five years to get through; five years that we’d invested wisely, I’d say.

Plot-twist: his brother, however, was incarcerated too. For what, you may ask? For killing their mother in the midst of a drug-induced rage.

Do you need to get up and fetch more popcorn? Perhaps refresh your beverage? I’ll wait. Thank you for hanging in there this far.

Unlike their counterparts reserved for more technical crimes, murder sentences are open-ended, by the way. Penitence and remorse aren’t presumed; they have to be earned and demonstrated to a standard painfully close to “beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

Not that anyone was keeping track of the years, mind you; it was a footnote in the family history, something seen out of the corner of the mind’s eye, before flinching and turning away. It was a cataclysmic event that left everyone involved with the deepest mental and emotional scars imaginable. If, as an observer, you believed in tidy realities and had read the newspaper clippings, you’d sum it up as a very terrible thing that happened to a very nice family; you’d shake your head, cluck your tongue, and tell your kids not to do drugs, because see what happens. Clearly the kid was off-the-rails. What a shame.

I did not believe in tidy realities anymore, because my then-fiancé and I had made the most of the shittiest reality we’d yet encountered in our lives. So, because I’m me, I asked the inevitable and impossible question: After having been in prison yourself, how do you feel about your brother?

I proposed that I reach out to him to test the waters, if he and his father were willing to let me do so. This was asking a lot—make no mistake. Take a second and think about the audacity, if you were in our collective shoes. In retrospect, I was probably out of my mind. This was unbelievable chutzpah, on the verge of hubris.

He was willing to give it a shot.

Just as I managed to marry a man of preternatural character and heart, those features were apparently genetic. His father heard me out (again, can you imagine cold-calling someone with whom you’d previously only spoken about the weather and other various-and-sundries heretofore, and tossing out this idea? “How does that sound, sir? Like a nice fireplace-poker to the eye, perhaps? Like so much well-intentioned salt in a massive wound?”). It had been over twenty years since the trauma. Was that enough? Was this a good idea? Was I a monster for contemplating something into which I had no right to insert myself?

He consented, so long as I respected the family’s privacy, including divulging no information that would endanger them, nor encumber them with some sort of resulting responsibility, explicit or inferred. This was a green-light to talk; nothing more.

That was one hell of a beau geste, though.

So, I penned the most awkward letter of my life, consisting of “hey, you don’t know me, but I’m your brother’s husband. Yeah; he’s gay—surprise! Oh, speaking of surprises, he’s in prison too. Neat, huh? Anyways, do you want to have a relationship again with your family?”

Sometimes I’m convinced I’m living in a video game, with the most insane character scripts imaginable.

Still, I’d spent four years finding my values, and four years honing them with someone else. The thing about establishing solid values is that they creep into every aspect of your life; they’re supposed to. That’s why they exist—and in claiming your truth, you relinquish the ability to control the narrative; to spin yarns. Instead, you are along for the ride, and as the car careens along the path of inevitability, dictated by what’s now real, other people slide into the passenger seats along the way. To quote a great line from Star Trek: “What you want is irrelevant; what you have chosen is at hand.” Just like Maya Angelou’s wisdom, it works both ways—that can be either a terrifying epiphany, or a profound and empowering truth. Our allegiance to our values shapes the connotation.

I wondered what reply I would receive, and as it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long to find out. It was congenial: “Nice to meet you—fascinating that my brother’s gay; I didn’t know that. Wait, he’s in prison too?”

As the next few years rolled on, my husband was eventually released, and the relationship with his brother blossomed. The letters flowed, and later turned into phone calls along with video visits. His brother resumed communicating with his father; his father eventually started taking phone calls, too. A lot of lost ground was recovered.

Previously, his father’s role was limited (if one could term it that, for a role of such profound responsibility) to voting-down parole, on the grounds that job skills and consistent, good behavior hadn’t been established. He was doing his best to safeguard the rest of us from someone he knew mostly from the outside-in. It was laudable and certainly understandable.

Now, however, things had changed. My brother-in-law had thrown himself into everything asked of him: AA meetings, self-improvement, cognitive behavioral therapy, college courses, and welding as a job skill. Turns out, the guy is a magnificent welder. He has insane math skills and an excellent eye for engineering, and it also turns out that he loves it. He’s absolutely passionate about it.

Good things snowballed with other good things, and though the years of proof in the pudding were essential, the changes were profound and extraordinary. The guy had seized control of his life so holistically that I struggle to find other people in my life whom I could cite as analogues. Even my husband and I had only really had to rework just so much of ourselves to become who we were. This was like watching a caterpillar dissolve and turn into a butterfly, right before our eyes. It was amazing. It was intense.

Life in the meantime—for the two of us—was about full investment in him. Lots of phone calls; lots of mentoring, emotional support, and comparing notes. Tons of encouragement. Thousands of dollars every year in quarterly food and consumables packages, books-money, and odds-and-ends. Establishment and maintenance of a professional membership for welding. Setting aside money to be sure he had extra for when he was released. NASA spends less time prepping missions to the moon, but the goal is the same: launching a human being, and keeping them in good shape.

It was never one-sided, though—he’s a genuinely great guy. He has a diabolical sense of humor and spectacular wit, and an altogether different perspective on things than my husband and I have, and we’re the richer for the sharing. He and my husband have rebooted a far deeper, better relationship than they ever had growing-up. The same is true between him and his father; they spend lots of time discussing everything, and truly enjoying each other’s company. In so many ways, having someone in our lives who hails psychologically from the late nineties reminds us of how much the burdens of distraction and attention-mining have weakened us. He suffers no such distractions, and feels no issue with completely focusing on other people and their natures. Every investment in him has been returned ten-fold, and we thoroughly looked forward to the time we’d spend someday.

There were struggles and setbacks; we all wavered at times amidst the exhaustion that life inevitably brings at one time or another. Nevertheless, we all persisted. Eventually, it was time for one hopefully-last parole hearing, and it was one we all prayed he would ace. As it turned out, it was the chance for all of us to ace it together—because it could be no other way.

Parole hearings are not like court hearings. To quote Depeche Mode: “Everything counts in large amounts.” There are no rules of evidence. Anything can be considered, and above all else: the onus to prove lasting, positive change is on the incarcerated. Moreover, the victims’ wishes are held as sacred, given as much weight in consideration as possible.

Despite his Herculean efforts, our participation in the hearing was essential. He’d spent weeks and weeks with his attorney preparing (I’d spent hours and hours on the phone with various ones over the years, navigating the ins-and-outs, and learning a lot about the remarkable people who devote their careers to what can sometimes seem like the best losing battle imaginable). We’d sent letters of support, and agreed to appear by Zoom. We were, to be quite honest, dramatically less prepared than he. No one had coached us; we were the ones who showed-up.

Hearings are supposed to be relatively cursory affairs; the inmate’s performance would be evaluated in terms of demonstrating remorse and empathy, showing effort at self-improvement, and showcasing consistent good behavior. Points are added and subtracted for this and that; prior transgressions could haunt like so many ghosts from the past, no matter how distant. Poignant questions are asked, sometimes about conversations from decades ago. (I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast.) Psychologists weigh-in; attorneys speak. The victims are consulted. At some point, all data points are essentially run through a formula and discussed in conference, and a determination is made. The process typically takes forty-five minutes to an hour.

Ours lasted three.

The board was both unaccustomed to encountering someone who had thrown themselves so hard at turning things around, and were also wildly unused to having the victims—who had previously sent letters saying “sounds like a bad idea”—show-up in force to petition for release.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt like they were in a screwed-up video game that day.

I wish I could say the experience was wonderful, or left me with the same glowing echoes of emotion as a feel-good movie. I wish I could say it was a slam-dunk; that his monumental investments simply yielded dividends in front of God and everybody that were incontrovertible.

In truth, it was the most emotionally devastating and exhausting experience I have ever encountered in my life, and I hope to God I never go through it again. (And I was not a victim; I was an involved-other who had simply established some street-cred by being the primary communicator and conduit of support, both for him and for the family writ-large.)

It involved replaying the crime in horrific detail—something I had not anticipated, but clearly should have. It sets the tone; it establishes the proper gravitas, after all.

I had the privilege of watching my husband and his brother’s faces contort into the most clarion expressions of anguish I have ever seen. Have you ever really witnessed anguish? I’d wager many of us probably haven’t. Not really—we may think we’ve seen something close, the way we might say we’re “starving” when we’re mildly-to-moderately hungry. We’ve caught a passing glimpse, but it was more likely some other strong emotion: despair, or anger, or profound embarrassment. Whatever it might have been, unless you’ve experienced it, you have not seen anguish.

You will know it when you do. You will never forget what it looks like. It will haunt you the rest of your days, and you will be both grateful for the encounter, and pray that you never cross its path again.

At an end that took forever to arrive amidst a preponderance of pluses and minuses, of muted approval at progress made, balanced with deep skepticism due to prior mistakes: the statements of the victims were given.

His father—too ill to attend (nor would I have wanted to, for reasons uncountable)—provided a letter that stands to this day as one of the finest documents of human divinity I have ever witnessed. It was the most exquisite embodiment of forgiveness and peace; of redemption and closure. Of embracing the value of what exists now juxtaposed with the inestimable value of what could be, even in the knowledge that one could never, by definition, be made whole again.

It was a sculpture—a work of art—that expressed the idea that losing another life, with its infinite potential, would not suffice to balance the loss of one that was extinguished too soon.

I don’t know what it feels like to come to terms with that inside one’s soul, and write something like that as a result. It can only be, so much as I can tell, what Enlightenment looks like, in the midst of the contradictions of joy and sorrow, peace and strife.

After that nuclear bomb had been deployed, my husband delivered the most eloquent and heartfelt speech contemporaneously, which blew my mind. People usually think I’ve got a way with words.

My speech was forgettable and trite compared to his oration. In one swoop, he capped the affair with the desire to have his brother again, and all that came with it—the joy, the humor, the shared journey that had been abandoned for nearly three decades.

The board adjourned to conference, and left us in the ringing aftermath of the most gorgeous annihilation, the most painful goodness we’d imagined. Now, a new emotion joined the fray: anxiety. Profound, soul-wracking anxiety. We were all granted time to take a break, and use the restroom, since all of us had continued long past the time that had been expected.

They emerged post-deliberation.

They granted him parole, and took the time to articulate the confluence of extraordinary circumstances that led them to their decision. The enormity of what had just transpired was not lost upon them, either.

In the months to come—after he has the chance to phase into a world deeply out-of-sync with both the one he’s known for most of his life, and his memory of how it used to be—I’ll get to meet my brother-in-law for the first time. In the months to come, my husband will have his brother back in his life—brilliant humor, uncanny wisdom, remarkable faith, exceptional perspective, steadfast patience, and all. (Plus no knowledge of goddamned smartphones.)

It is a good ending. It was unexpected; it is not the ending anyone would have imagined. It is not of my doing; it is something of a facilitation. I was merely a new perspective; a new tool that freed the chocks beneath the wheels that moved through the power of people who were greater, stronger, more forgiving, and more divine than me. I can only hope to aspire to their greatness.

I can only aspire to be that human.

You have asked me to tell you about my community; I shall ask you to contemplate yours

This is but one story; this is one thread in what I have done so far. I have done other things, but this story represents the best of who I am; the best of what I have done.

I present it to you not for praise nor criticism; I simply lay it before you. You ask me what I know about community and what I have done, and I have given you this.

It is not—as I noted—all there is to it; there is more. Nevertheless, this is not the point; this is not a contest. This is not a competition for who has the most credibility, or the most fingers in so many worthy pies.

The point is this: in building your community, it will be anything and everything. The parts at which you consciously labor will not circumscribe all of its members; it will not encompass its true breadth. It is imperative that you bear this in mind.

When something happens that summons it, you will have your first opportunity to realize who it truly contains.

This is the fun part; the good part. It’s the part we all think about, when we contemplate community. It’s the closeness, the mutual aid; the shared benefits, and the time together working toward common goals.

That is only part of it, however.

In considering community academically or philosophically only in its favorable aspects, we gloss over the most important truth: that a real-life community still involves bad things happening to good people. It involves the messy parts of humanity—the greed, the sloth, the temptations, and the competition. It means being betrayed or screwed-over by someone you trusted. It means your tiny hobbitesque village will occasionally go astray, and all of this will involve you—or maybe even roll-up to you—because it is your community.

You can’t call someone else to fix the problem for you. You cannot ghost someone; you cannot write them off. Troubles unaddressed will be troubles that fester. No one else will come to sequester troublemakers somewhere else, where they cannot cause further issues. Can you exist without a jail, or had it simply never crossed your mind?

The lesson I have learned is that every member of your community has value—profound value, and a divine aspect. They also have their failings, and their weaknesses. (So do I.) They will disappoint you bitterly at times. They will also occasionally blow your mind and send the shrapnel of your assumptions flying.

Beyond the amenities we all regurgitate about complimentary skills and unity of purpose, there is simply the fact that every human life is a story: a journey, rich with potential. In walking away, we cut off another path that could join ours; we eliminate an option. We kick out a passenger from our shared caravan of lived truth.

Just as you consider all the good that can come from a group of people living and working together, contemplate the bad that will inevitably arise; the events that will stun you, or leave you reeling. Think about situations where you’re devoted to a plurality of individuals, and must thread the needle to make it work amongst you—to make it work between one community and another. Are you ready to rise to the challenge of being an outstanding, extraordinary, yet nuanced human? Are you prepared to be the arbiter of conflicts that surpass the abilities of others to resolve? Are you ready to put your ass on the line for someone else just because you see the good and the potential in them, and because you consider being alive to be the ultimate privilege?

It is on you to be the vanguard for what true humanity looks like, and that means going far deeper than you ever could have imagined to search for truth and redemption—in others, yes, but correspondingly in yourself.

No one is coming to relieve you of that responsibility. Everyone takes their turn in the seat of decisiveness.

It’s the agreement we make together, and it changes all of us. I can’t tell you what to do, other than to always be searching with open eyes for that light of the divine, for that confluence of word and deed, and that synchrony of spoken words and body language. Always look for the road less traveled. Search for the lurking issues unnamed and unaddressed. Practice that vigilance, and be ready to see where it takes you—once your values have taken the wheel, and what you have chosen is at hand.

That’s what has been required of me thus far. It has led me here, and I don’t know where the road ahead will carry us. But absent that spark and that effort—that willingness to do something crazy after discovering something true—the world, for us at least, would be a very different place. A very long story would have had a very different ending. The possibilities would be fewer, the reality would be grey and somber, and the opportunity to challenge our assumptions would have been lost.

Every person from whom we walk away shrinks our community by one, and cuts the number of paths and possibilities we can pursue. Eventually, we stand alone and defenseless; friendless, and with no recourse.

Take what I have shared with you to heart, and let it inform you. There is no checklist; there are no cheat codes. There is simply other people, and hard work, and the perfect investment of your own integrity. In the end, that is both enough, and it is everything.

I wish you the best, from someone who now appreciates fully what that means.