Reflections on a Wedding

I spent this last weekend at the wedding of one of my best friends. I was Best Man, in fact. The weekend concluded my ninth wedding in a 12 month period. That time of life, I suppose.

Over the course of the weekend I couldn’t help but find myself thinking about the importance of communities. I thought about how these communities change over time and how one’s communities are colored by very distinct decisions they make in life. My friend is a surgeon and thus, many attendees of the wedding came from his med school or had a medical background. In contrast, the few of us from high school found ourselves talking about the same things we talked about as teenagers - indie rock bands and general shenanigans.

I was reminded of a pretty simple equation: the decisions that my friend Charles made to become a doctor and to go to med school, shaped the community he had. In turn, the communities he continues to choose to be a part of today influence the way he processes information and experiences.

Thinking back on my own life, the communities that I am a part of are a direct effect of these decisions (not an exhaustive list):

• the decision to go to Brown University
• the decision to play tennis throughout high school
• the decision to pursue a BA in Race and Ethnicity
• the decision to work at Google and Amazon
• the decision to leave NY and move to Los Angeles
• the decision to pursue Olympic Weightlifting competitively

I wrote this list out as a quick exercise. I find it helpful for a performance oriented workhorse like myself. While many of these decisions were made because of the achievements they promised, today I reflect on them with a focus on the communities they provided.

Thinking about the driving forces behind what makes strong communities is important because having strong communities is what makes me feel human. It’s what makes me feel explicitly connected to something that is larger than myself and thus, allows me to be more present. The farther away I feel I am from communities, the smaller my world becomes and the more I feel I need to be at the center of that very small world. The closer I am to my communities, the more space I have to be present. That is not an ‘achievement’. That is something different and it feels nourishing. 

On Making/Keeping Friends

Nordstrom's brand new CMO Brian Dennehy plays old-school tag (yes, "you're it" variety of tag) with a group of his childhood friends. The Wall Street Journal article describes the rules of the game:

The game they play is fundamentally the same as the schoolyard version: One player is "It" until he tags someone else. But men in their 40s can't easily chase each other around the playground, at least not without making people nervous, so this tag has a twist. There are no geographic restrictions and the game is live for the entire month of February. The last guy tagged stays "It" for the year.

Dennehy and his friends end up flying halfway across the country, conniving with car salesmen to let them hide in the trunk of a car, and jumping out at the least expected moments just to revel in the glory of delivering a long awaited "You're it!"

There are two insights I'm taking away from Dennehy's shenanigans. The first is that you can do a wealth of silly activities and as long as they're with the right people, they're 100% justifiable. 

Secondly, friendships are no different than any other work in our lives in that if you want to see successful outcomes, you need to put aside the time and energy and dedicate focus. Sure, this was never the case growing up where friendships were 1 part convenience, 1 part chemistry, and 1 part Adam-has-a-basketball-hoop-at-his-home. But with adult lives and agendas in full motion, blocking off time to develop or sustain strong friendships is more important than ever. Vacations and trips away are less of a Spring Break in Miami and more of a way to remember why our friends play a role in our lives (even if the trip is in Miami anyway).