Orbit & Choice.
It's been awhile. Life is happening.
I turned 27 in July. It’s hard to concretely imagine 27 full cycles of 365 days. That’s a lot of days, for anyone bad at math. Of course, the first 1800 or so are kind of a blur. The last 7000ish are with me. Some burn bright and steal my focus, some live a little quieter.
We are not born into our personalities. We may be more likely to inherit qualities from our parents like mischievousness or an aptitude for math. However, it is our daily experiences that can be studied and read, with the summation being our present self. Broken or whole. Battered or shiny clean. Hopeful or in dismay. In any case, we are the decisions and events of the cycles of years. You didn’t choose you. No window shopping. Your minute by minute choices have written you into life.
One of those decisions is friendship. We have the ability to consciously choose the people with which we surround ourselves. Some of these interactions are forced: youth sports, work, history class. Some of these interactions are incidental: a subway ride, the coffee line, detention. They are serendipitous and wonderful. In either case, an exchanging of events occurs. One person experiences the other in a captured moment that exists uniquely and untouchably to only that person. Where do the moments go? Why do they happen?
Whether random or fate, these exchanges are also choices. Choices turn into friendship, or they turn into another millisecond in the cycles of 365. In reflecting on the beginning of year 27, I can’t help but think of my own untouchable interactions: my own choices that are now my people.
I have certainly lived a blessed and vast life. I’ve visited a multitude of continents, countries, and states. I have competitively played 5 different sports. I have lived in seven different cities. I attended 2 different high schools. Lastly, through storytelling and an ounce of courage, I was instantly connected to hundreds of thousands of other untouchable interactions just by telling the world I was gay.
Athletics and education and travel and public speaking have brought me more social exchanges than I ever imagined one could experience at an early point in life. I have partly these opportunities to thank, and also my parents for forcing me to be endlessly and excessively social since birth. Sometimes I reflect on the sheer number of human connections I have made, and wonder if I have made the right choices.
Have I stuck with the right ones? Have I recognized which would stay? Has each one been as long as it was meant to be? There are no real answers to those questions. The ones that stuck have stuck. Chemistry and fate and free will have combined to create these interactions that I have been so lucky to experience. I bet if you are reading this and you think of the 20 people you speak most with on a weekly basis, it wasn’t the same 10 years ago, or even 2 years ago, or possibly even last week.
Friends are something easily taken for granted. I’ve done it many times before. Woe is me, that someone hurt me. Woe is me, that I messed up and they moved on. Woe is me, that I don’t get to see my friends very often. They wouldn’t want to hear from me often. It’s too hard staying in touch. The truth is, I don’t take advantage of them enough. Hundreds sit at the other end of a phone call, waiting to show me love. Waiting to express why their interaction has stuck. The ebbs and flows are written off as victim circumstances, when in reality, we are just forgetting we are humans trying to do our best.
Whether the memory is a one-off meeting or a life of laughter, I appreciate each and every human I’ve had the privilege to meet or cross my path. I am so happy that I know you. I am so thankful you pushed me to be a better teammate, to stretch my imagination, or to simply make me smile once. I am sorry if our interaction was short. I am sorry for hurting you on my way to self discovery. I am glad our interaction happened. You are why I am me today. 27 years later, you have had a part in creating a proud, flawed, emotional, intelligent, and curious being.
Text me if you have my number. Reach out if you need a helping hand. Whether it is me, or the next interaction you come across, remember that it matters. Remember that YOU matter. Your voice, your laugh, your memory, your compliment, matters. The highlight reel of your choices is you. What’s next on your highlight reel?
Song of the day: All I Am - Jess Glynne
