why brofest is so important

In late July, I packed up the car and headed down through San Marcos to Sattler, Texas to meet up with friends I’ve known for the better part of fifteen years. The plan was simple: grill a ton of food, drink a ton of beer (most of us), talk as much shit as possible, and make the seven hour float trip down the Guadalupe River. Having long been nicknamed “Brofest” or the “Sattler Swordfest”, this gentlemen’s gathering has become tradition, and I was happy to make the trek to lower Texas and take part in my first such retreat.

I’ve known for years now that staying entrenched in my own daily life causes my focus to become terribly narrow, small issues and experiences to seem overwhelming, and it’s only by getting away and stepping outside the routine that some shred of perspective is restored.

While what happens at Brofest proverbially stays at Brofest, I will say that in addition to the expected change in perspective, I gained an awareness that in the age of the Internet as a communication medium and the ease with which friends can become text on a screen, with the comfort of having a wife and the addition of a child to my family with all his attendant needs, it had become even easier to stay physically isolated in my tiny, daily bubble. I had, at some point, thrown face-to-face human socialization on the back burner.

Much later, on the morning of September 12th, E and I woke to our Sunday ritual of sitting in bed next to each other while L jumped around and threw pillows at us. E checked her email on the mini laptop, and received a single message stating that one of her best friends succumbed that weekend to a fifteen year battle with cancer. E was devastated beyond words. We booked her a plane ticket, and tried to pack a suitcase. Her friend had been only 38.

Less than twenty four hours later, we both sat in the airport lobby waiting for her delayed flight to begin boarding. We didn’t say a whole lot, she put her head on my shoulder a few times, and mostly talked about how she would miss me and L. But in the midst of one particular stretch of silence, I verbalized an understanding we both had arrived at independently that morning, that of the overwhelmingly temporary nature of our lives.

E and I routinely discuss life goals, changes we’d like to make, possible career moves, the pursuit of various trades and hobbies, the eventual sale of our house after the completion of its remaining projects. We talk of plans for L’s childhood, parts of the world we’d love him to see, oceans we’d love him to swim in, “firsts” we’d like him to experience. We even talk about what part of the country we’d like him to grow up in, throwing around the idea of possibly moving back to the East Coast. We’ve spoken of these things as if they’re reserved for some future time period that exists after some particular life circumstance magically changes.

In the hours that elapsed between receiving the news the previous morning and passing the pre-flight moments at the airport, it became strikingly evident that most of us walk around feeling as if we have a limitless amount of time to make our dreams happen. We think that “someday” we will travel, or rekindle some friendship, or make that career change, or reconcile with that loved one, or build that new house. In reality, that time runs out, and possibly far sooner than expected.

In the days following E’s plane departure and this change in perspective, I was again confronted with my tendencies toward isolation and myopic immersion in the daily grind, and the exclusion of almost all else. I started making small changes, first just simply making sure L and I got to playgrounds on a regular basis. This has since grown into making sure E and I make the effort to cultivate the friendships we value, and that we make time to pursue the hobbies we’ve always hoped will turn into careers.

On the afternoon that I sat with E at the airport and wished her goodbye, I later returned to work and spoke with my friend Sean. I was still overwhelmed with the weird consciousness of life’s ever-shrinking duration, while heavily overcome with a secondary grief reaction to E’s friend’s death. I proceeded to vomit all this on him in the hopes of some shred of relief.

When my outpouring finally came to a close and there was room for him to talk, he waited a minute, and simply said, “I know, B. This is why Brofest is so important.”