Good Friends and Jager Toasts
On building community, establishing traditions, and finding our people
When I started this project, I figured I’d write about a lot of things. I did not imagine that Jagermeister would be one of them. I had it for the first time in about twenty years last weekend. And yes, I recall the last time with vivid clarity (a story for another time). What was the occasion? Well, we did Jager toasts at a friend’s birthday party. A tradition they explained that went back to college. I was skeptical, that’s my nature. Despite my trepidation at drinking Jager and being nervous to give an extemporaneous toast, it was a wonderful shared experience and a delightful tradition.
When you get older, making friends is hard. And making really good friends is almost impossible. There’s a song “If you go down” by Kelsea Ballerini that comes to mind when I think about really good friends. Give it a listen, the lyrics are funny.
Our bodies are buried and they're in the same ditch
So even if I wanted to, I can't snitch
Thirty to life would go quicker with you
When we moved to Denver, we didn’t really know anyone. We were moving from the East Coast to a new city and a new life. Because I grew up in Kansas, my family visited Denver a lot. My brother also lived in Colorado for fifteen years, so it felt familiar. Even so, it was just the two of us, coming to a place without a safety net.
In DC, we had friends. They were other attorneys that we had met as associates at our law firm. We’d worked long hours together and become a tight-knit group. My wife and I, though, had stopped enjoying the city. It was big, and touristy, and stressful. As we fell in love with each other, we fell out of love with DC.
It was hard leaving our friends, but we wanted out of the city and my wife wanted to be a prosecutor. She applied all over the country. Denver just happened to be where she got the first offer. While I had been to Denver numerous times, her first time in Colorado was when she came to interview. After she accepted the job, we packed up our stuff, sent it off with the movers, and drove west.
We’ve now been here for seven years. Seems like a lifetime and like it was just yesterday. We’ve lived in three different houses. We each have different jobs. We have a daughter now, and a place in the mountains, and the same huge, shaggy, kind of smelly dog. And after seven years and a pandemic, we’re still making friends and building our community.
When we talk about whether to stay in Denver as our daughter grows older, community is always a significant part of that conversation. When you’re not from a place, didn’t grow up there, or go to school there, and you’re raising a toddler and holding down stressful jobs, it’s just a harder thing to find. Last weekend, while celebrating and toasting with good friends, I felt progress on that front. And progress is something to recognize and to celebrate.
I recently finished “Build the Life You Want” by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey. The whole book is quite good, but one excellent takeaway is that happier people have figured out how to focus on family, friends, work, and faith in meaningful ways.
The emphasis on friendship resonated, because my friendships have not always been my greatest source of happiness. Things have changed as I’ve grown older and learned how to approach friendships with less of a remove. I have learned to default to yes, to not cancel even when I am exhausted, and to show gratitude and appreciation in the ways that feel natural to me.
Still friendship is not always easy. I find it difficult to have deep and meaningful conversations, to share my hopes and fears, and, to borrow from Kelsea, to talk about in what ditch we might bury the bodies. Our friends of the Jager toast tradition do all of these things. Well, maybe not the ditch one just yet. But they are people of words, and meaning, who are not afraid of difficult conversations.
Having friends like that, who nudge, and if that’s not working, that push or shove the conversation into uncomfortable territory is new for me. They are not our only friends that do this, and I find myself gravitating towards people like this with greater regularity. People that ask “how are you doing?” in a way that makes you feel like they want the real answer, not the superficial one. Friends like that are worth choosing.
When I think about these friends, those that we are building our community around, I can’t help but be happy. We increasingly have people that we count on, and those that count on us. We have friends that celebrate our wins and commiserate when it’s hard. And we are building traditions with these friends — hell, I’ll probably even look forward to a Jager toast from time to time. While we may not yet have the fulsome community that we seek, we are making progress. And if you’re one to make toasts, maybe you could toast to progress, because progress is definitely worth celebrating.
As always, thank you for reading. Please send me a note or leave a comment with any reactions.
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