i wrote in my journal yesterday: "it is a strange, new, melancholic experience for me-- to care for someone so deeply, that when you find yourself imagining a future when you're no longer a part of their orbit, that's okay anyway, as long as they are happy."

i write you far too many letters. and yet i could never write enough of them.

there is something so deeply peaceful, and moving, and bright, and pure, about deep platonic friendship. it has all of the love and joy of romantic attraction, and yet, none of the drama, none of the complicated worries and mismatched expectations and heartbreak and disappointment. i am just happy to be here, now, talking to you. i do not hold you to impossibly high standards or solicit promises for the future or demand exclusivity-- that's not how friendships work.

lydia calls you a sparkle-extractor; i'm not fully inclined to agree-- 'sparkle' implies that an object is reflecting your own shine back to you. i think your gift is bringing out the inner light of others, rather than enabling them to mirror back the brightness of you. your life, if i had to put it into words, is a constellation; you, a shooting star; the stars that you touch become brighter for it.

malaika says your position relative to others matters-- that you should be mindful of how you compare to those around you. call me a contrarian for disagreeing once more, but i think what's far more important is having an average of five that you are proud of, people whose example you're proud to aspire toward. yes, relative to you i feel exceedingly inadequate; you are so good, you try so hard to be good. but your goodness doesn't diminish me-- it inspires me to want to do better, to want to be better, to want to be half as good a human as you are. i truly think yours is a heart of gold.

a heart of gold is made not in the attainment of perfection, but in the little ways you try to get closer and closer to it, every day-- the pursuit is what makes you good, at heart.

dilon says you're greater than galileo; i'd be inclined to agree. fully, wholeheartedly; your version of the catholic church is andreessen horowitz; you are just as truth-seeking about everything as galileo was; you'd stand up for your beliefs just as stubbornly as he did-- and what makes you greater than him is that you'd move mountains to make the truth known, and accepted, and acted upon. your truths matter in an existential way, and you're fighting tooth and nail to save galileo's heliocentric world.

it is the difference between oxford and sf. one seeks to understand the world, the other seeks to shape it. both involve sacrifices, but there is a certain passivity to the truths that galileo stood for, and a certain gravity to the ones that you fight for.

i cannot wait to see all of the amazing things you do and the wonderful adventures you'll have.

thank you for being a friend that i'd be so overjoyed to be friends with for life. thank you for being a friend that i'd be so overjoyed to see halley's comet with in 2061.

and even if we have drifted apart by then, that is okay, because i know you will be happy-- i know you shall find the settled kind of happiness that only comes from a life well spent.