I truly believe that the greatest gift that you can give to another person is to genuinely let them know that who they are and what they do matters. It has been my goal in 2014 to become a more thoughtful person. A string of deaths to some individuals who positively affected my life led me to conceive this series. As the words to my favorite song go, “And for those who have stood by my side, you are the story I tell.” You are the words and pages to my story.
Over the course of the next several months, I will be writing open letters to those who have positively impacted my story. I’m not going to lie. It is my goal to make you cry, not out of grief or pain but out of the realization that you do truly matter. I am not doing this in order of how important you are to me. For the most part (other than birthdays or other important events), the letters will be done in a random order. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you come away from this with the realization that you are extremely important to me.
Dear Ken,
When I met you ten years ago, I couldn’t stand you. I know this isn’t that much of a surprise, as we’ve talked about this and a plethora of other things ever since. I resented who you were… your online persona, at least. It was everything I wished I could be in my life but lacked the confidence to actually do. I was totally envious of the fact that you knew who you were and used that knowledge to draw others to you.
We kinda kept our distance from one another on the board for that first year. We were friendly rivals, but nothing else. All of a sudden we became friends in early to mid-2005. It was a good thing for me. While I have always tried to forge my own path, I’ve needed guidance over time. You have provided that guidance, and I have learned a lot from you.
You’ve taught me that it’s okay to be me and that who I am is better than trying to follow a gimmick, but you’ve also taught me the importance of not acting impulsively. We’ve talked at length about the “scorched earth” approach and its merits, and you’ve shown me the virtues in taking a measured approach to things. My dealings with the opposite sex have directly improved as a result of knowing you.
We all tend to be the hero in our own story. We see our deeds as heroic and our enemies as villains and antagonists. You’ve helped me see that everything is not as black and white as that. Some of what I do is not heroic and is more selfish and individualistic in nature, and I need to own up to it. There’s nothing wrong with being the antihero, but above all I need to be honest with myself. Thanks to our friendship, I have a greater sense of self-awareness.
We’ve known each other a decade now. Both of us have had our share of heartache and heartbreak, and we have both reinvented ourselves a number of times, but we’ve kept going. I was part of your life during perhaps your darkest hour. It would have been very easy for you to either give up or continue to spiral down that dark path. But you, like me, want to end your story with a victory, so you kept going. I know you’re not where you want to be, but I know you’re a whole lot closer to that place than you were five or six years ago. I’ve watched you on that journey.
We still haven’t gotten to meet in person due to time, money, and geography. I can only imagine the havoc that will be wreaked when we are in the same place. I look forward to that day, and I look forward to more of our conversations. Thank you for being my friend, and thank you for helping me to gain a greater and more honest sense of myself.
For the Trinity,
Jakob
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