I miss meeting you here in this space.  It is at first so very, very empty.  And yet, with you in my mind and these words to fill this page, somehow what was once blank and devoid of meaning becomes a place we share.  I find you here, my dearest.  Always here.  In the words we have shared.  So many, many words.

I find the passage of time creeping into my thoughts without my permission.  I find myself longing for you and for the time we spent preoccupied with development of the soul.  Absurdly overwhelmed with all the nothing.  I had a paper due in four weeks.  And so instead of writing it, we sat and listened to good music.  We talked abut the world as though we could know it.  And perhaps we did.  Perhaps better than we do now what with the rushing and obligations and growing up.

Growing up is rather dreary work, isn't it?

We took our pups to the dog park tonight.  A cool, summer night with ample grass and pups walking around joyously and being nothing but mundane creatures who find love in every beat of the heart (a rather goofy species, aren't they? which is why we must love them so dearly?).  As I was driving home, I thought about all the times as I got older that I put off playing kick the can or some other crazy kid night game.  How many times did I think to myself, "I'll just do it tomorrow night."  In some kind of crazy blur, doing it another night has disappeared and now I am far too old without the excuse of my own child to go gallivanting through the streets playing with other humans.  And yet, from the very depths of my soul, it is so desperately what I wish to do.  I wish to stay out too late with the smell of grass worn into my knees and my muscles exhausted from the kind of running only kids do.  The kind of running that is NOT forced on a treadmill for the sake of blood pressure.  The heart thumping dear-lord-has-he-seen-me hide-and-seek kind of running.  I want to dash about and find new friends and be friends simply for having played.  When we were younger, having played was enough.

I have to imagine we still have that in us, even after all these years of drudgery.  Surely, underneath it all, we all just want to be barefoot.

I showed my good buddy Shannon the "Scared is Scared" video you posted on my facebook wall a bit back.  I made some off the cuff, conversation-making comment about how neat kids are.  And with great sincerity, she responded, "It's marvelous, all the things they have to teach us.  Think of all the things we could learn from them."  It struck me how outlandish and preposterous that thought was.  In our society, kiddos are the idiots.  They're the ones who have the growing up to do.

What if, all along, we were smartest--bravest--at the age of six?  Maybe we knew more then.  Maybe being here longer than twelve years is the thing that makes us stupidest of all.

I know adulthood has good things for us.  I know I should be excited to do adult things like work a job about which I feel mostly apathy and raise life-sucking money-squandering kids of my own, but I don't.  I want to curl up in a tent pitched between two couches in a living room and play forts with my brothers.  I want to find you there on the couch in our dorm room with a good microbrew and dear lord I want to waste so much time.  I want to waste and waste and waste and find at the end of it all that I am rather the opposite of empty.  That, indeed, I am so full there is hardly room for Moonstruck.  And yet, you know me, I will always find room for cocoa.

And so my dearest, we will go out in the rain-soaked evening.  Our clothes are still damp from our walk up the hill, but we will go, anyway.  And we will drive through the tree-lined streets in the darkness, up and over the hills, and there, strip mall lights beaming out of the Portland gloom, we will shop the pastries and the chocolates and we will ultimately decide on the cocoa.  Because we always drink the cocoa.  Always.

I did not realize at Lewis and Clark how finite our time was.  I thought the rest of life must necessarily march on in the meaningful way our education did at that particular Hogwarts.  I have found in my adult life, more often than not, we are adult zombies.

Which brings me, of course, to the speech I made at Pete's wedding.  I haven't been writing.  I am sure you have noticed the lack of words here (or anywhere).  As such, I was nervous to write a speech.  And being who I am, I put it off.  Until the day it was to be given.  I awoke that morning in quite a fright (mostly sad because it struck me how awfully much my family has changed) and realized I had better get to writing.  And so I awoke in a mansion overlooking a golf course and the Lake of the Ozarks and I peered through a wall of glass out to an approaching storm and convinced myself I could be inspired.  But it didn't come easy.  Not at all.  Not like it used to.

Perhaps because I wanted it to mean something clear and perhaps because I was a bit rusty and perhaps because feeling as sad as I did about all the people around me changing I couldn't think of anything nice to write.  Imagine standing in front of a crowd of room shouting out some depressing Kundera nonsense.  That would not do.  It simply would not.

And so I took my time and I listened to Valley of the Shadow and This Is Neverland and Mayan Bowl Breaks and I wrote what I could and I slipped in as much Kundera as possible (emphasizing, of course, the positive points...the few that exist:).  And I wrote this:

As a group, humans are undeniably infatuated with dreaming.  We are asked from a very young age where we see ourselves as we get older and imagine up wild realities.  From becoming the president of the United States to escaping this reality for that of Tolkien or C.S. Lewis to pursuing the life of a vagabond writer or musician, caring neither for money, food, or company, we humans are nothing if not fantastic creators of fiction.   And I will not stand here and argue that any of those pursuits, particularly that of running off with Frodo, Gandalf, or Gypsies, is ignoble. 

This life, however, is unceasingly fleeting.  It is an inconvenient truth that while the years of our lives seem endless as children, they progress so steadily that it is difficult to account for all the time.  And worst of all, so glaringly apparent in all of the difficult choices we make, there is no dress rehearsal when it comes to the thousands and thousands of decisions we are required to make.  We get to do this thing once, one time, and with blind faith pray that our hearts, our dreaming, has not led us astray.

All of this, the wild sprint from an adorable little zygote in the belly of our mother to that of a tottering old woman without the opportunity for a redo, is enough to drive any reasonable person mad.  And yet, despite all this, the graces of this life are innumerably present.  From the powerful meander of a thunderstorm to the kindness of strangers, we humans fill pages with the beauty held in any particular moment.

While there are multitudinous graces in this life, the greatest and most important—the only one worth taking our time—is present in all of its diverse forms here today.  From mother to son, brother to sister, dear friend to dear friend, the greatest gift of this life is having found others with which to share this journey.  There is little else that can hold such deep or resonating importance as to courageously make this walk with a group of humans whose hearts and souls and desires are inextricably tied to yours.

And so, what I dream for all of us here today is not a life filled with wealth, power, or prestige.  What I dream for each of us is the pursuit of a life filled bursting at the seams with meaningful moments with those we love.  I dream of long nights with too little sleep stuffed uncomfortably full with deep conversation.  I dream for all of us, but especially these two, on this day, their lives be inordinately filled with love.

I wrote that because it was all I could think of.  Sometimes I don't know what to say in my adult life.  Sometimes it is all too much.  But love, at least, has remained the same.

Which is why I miss you here, in this place.  In these words.  Because it has (and will remain) a place I love you so well.