In college, I lived with seven other guys in a decrepit house near campus at Western Kentucky University. Anyone who has visited The Castle knows that tenants named the home in irony. One of them, Parker Kuhn, married a superhero of a woman yesterday. Her name is Grace. She and Parker are the reasons that us eight knights had a chance to reunite.
Over and over this weekend, we said the words, “I love you.” Now I am alone for the first time in two days and I can hear my own breathing and my heart beating and its blood in my ears. But I am learning to make space for the sensations in my body. They begin to settle, like flakes in a snow globe, only in these periods of silence, stillness, even indolence.
After a beautiful weekend spent gathering and celebrating, I need time and space to let emotional residue situate. This is when I get a clearer glimpse at my experience, and every once in a while, try to understand it. Not everyone does this, but I find it a helpful process
In my last semester at the “Castle,” I entered a period of emotional hardship. Because of my roommates, it was also a period of growth. There are two structures in my life that will always keep it from tumbling: friends and music. When I was grieving the end of my first real romantic relationship, my bookends were soft-hearted roommates and a Pinegrove album called Cardinal. They stood on either side of me in my last semester of college.
Most young men have to give themselves permission to express the fact that they feel something, anything deeply. The album Cardinal was instrumental in my own emotional maturation. It solidified its place in my psyche at the end of its opening track, “Old Friends,” with this stanza:
My steps keep splitting my grief
Through these solipsistic moods
I should call my parents when I think of them
should tell my friends when I love them.
Within one particular month, I listened to “Old Friends” enough for the line, “I should tell my friends when I love them,” imprinted itself as more than a sentiment -- it became a personal value.
I am stuck on a conversation from last night with a new friend who said that if men gain the courage to acknowledge the plight of their internal experience, they have the power to change our world.
Brandon, a roommate of mine at the Castle, spoke at the wedding ceremony. The cornerstone of his message was the role that Parker and Grace played in his own emotional transformation.
The meaning a good friend, in my opinion, is the psychological security and empowerment that comes from your confidence in their loyalty to you. Further, I believe the role of a friend is to reinforce that psychological security by showing love with utmost intention.
Friendship might look like Parker’s one-page notes to his groomsmen, or speaking words whenever you can. It might look like the quick embraces and spoken words, “I love you.” I cannot count the number of times these words have impacted me in times and places I never knew I needed to hear them.
We still tell our friends when we love them and I have seen the profound impact of this simple action. I believe that we are learning a fraternal love, and loving others is the Kingdom of Heaven. Call it a pipe dream, a utopia, but I long for a world where everyone speaks honest feelings of love others.
Brandon spoke, at times through tears, to about two hundred people. I think that he has the power to change the world, and I’m not saying that just because I love him. If I had dropped my boutonnière while he spoke, it would have echoed through the venue.
I idealized the lyrics in “Old Friends” more than I related to them. The line, “I should tell my friends when I love them,” sounds like regret within the context of the song. Without knowing the artist’s context for this line, I was certain of what it meant to me.
I want to live in such a way that I might avoid the regret of feelings left to live in silence. I am grateful that I have loving friends and that we choose, also, to verbalize it. To my friends — if you don’t know this already, you need to know that you have kept me on my feet.
Today, I am hungover, I miss my friends and Kobe Bryant is dead.
Today is a good day to say,
“I love you.“