I just did the round trip to KC and back to spend a little time in my own holy trinity of friendship with Jason and BJ. I wish I had pictures for you but we forgot the camera. Imagine the three of us at the Japanese steak house simultaneously drinking a pineapple rum concoction out of a ceramic volcano through two-foot straws while the 151 in the center burned with a three-inch flame. It would have made a great picture post. Forget the sushi and the steak, that third volcano was the real kicker (they gave us the third one for free as the service sucked). By the end of dinner I was asking Jason if full Scottish brogue why they’d named their daughter after a pitchfork (Neptune’s son actually).

BJ’s thirty-second birthday is coming up at the end of March so we did a guys weekend of cards, food, and cocktails. Tiff and Triton joined us for many of our misadventures so it was a very good time for all and a chance to get to know Tiff better. I had Triton Emily walking across a small section of the living room holding my fingers. She is an angelic child with a very sweet disposition.

Jason and Tiff’s wedding is coming up in Oregon soon and they’ve asked me to help them script and stage parts of the ceremony to reflect their interest in several alternative religious and cultural traditions – they want a non-traditional ceremony to reflect their non-traditional marriage. To say that I am honored that they’ve asked me to help is a bit of an understatement.

So this new responsibility, as well as spending time with people who know me very well, has fit into my ongoing thinking about how to live a valuable life. A wedding celebrates a shared choice, honors a union, blesses a couple and in the best of circumstances it should inspire both in anticipation and later, in memory.

So often we settle for the wrong job or the wrong relationship because we let ourselves forget what inspires us. As someone who is struggling to find my way into a new career and future, I can feel pretty far from the things that inspire me. Some days, maybe most days, I couldn’t even tell you what those things are or were. One thing ceremonies can do for us is help remind us of our inspirations – put us back on a better path when we lose sight of who we are or who we want to become.

I am inspired by my friends of late, and the support that they’ve all shown me with the losses and difficulties of the past few months. I do feel like I am finally coming back together into something resembling the man I once was, a little more worn but maybe a little more me. We are all all the better for our reciprocity.