A Wedding Speech
Grace Metz and Jarrett Rolison married under a warm December drizzle on December 6th, 2024. These were the opening words of their ceremony.
Good evening everyone. We're here to celebrate love, and Grace has entrusted me with saying some meaningful words on the topic. Although, I must admit, I don't know why. I'm 30 and single—what the hell do I know about love? I have little experience with that exalted emotion, especially compared to others here. Some of you have been married longer than I've been alive. Some of you might even have more divorces than I've had girlfriends, god forbid. Seriously, I'm out of my league here. Y'all listening to me is like that time a homeless woman trespassed into my old college house in broad daylight, took one look at the clutter and frat-boy grime, and said to me, "I can't believe you live like this." That's a true story. And since Grace didn't appoint me for my expertise, there's only one other reason she could have—and that's good ole fashioned nepotism. I hope you've set your expectations high. You know, Grace, for a while, I thought that maybe we should have hired a Craigslist Preacher, or a Facebook Marketplace Minister. Maybe those guys would know something about love.
But I couldn't bear the thought of giving up a captive audience and a crisp microphone, so I set out to fix my ignorance and learn something—anything—about love that would be worthy of this moment. In the months that followed, I studied. I read the wise words of great thinkers and philosophers who claim to know the nature of love. I listened to love stories—both inspiring and tragic—from people who say they know love through experience. I even consulted ChatGPT, in case our robot overlord had any silicon wisdom to offer. And y'all, if you can believe it, I did learn something about love—but it's not what you'd expect. I came away convinced that not only am I completely ignorant of love, but that everyone is. That's right: nobody understands anything about love. Not me, not the thinkers or philosophers, not the lifelong lovers or serial divorcees, not even the Craigslist Preachers or the Marketplace Ministers.
The reason for this is simple: because knowledge is power, baby. If what we knew about love were true, then we'd be able to use that knowledge to control love in some way, even if just a little. After all, this is the fundamental test of knowledge, and it applies to everything else we understand about the world. For example, we have the power to manufacture steel from iron and carbon because we understand metallurgy. We have the power to command electrons to do work for us because we understand the nature of electricity. We can cover the Earth in potatoes and corn because we understand very well what potatoes and corn need. And since Grace understands Jarrett, she can say just the right words in just the right baby voice to make him get her a glass of water, even though she's the one standing in the kitchen. But take note she can't do this to me. Why? Because she doesn't understand me well enough.
This is what everyone misses in the conversation about love. We say love is this and that, that love comes from here and there, that it needs x and y and z, but nothing anyone has ever claimed about love has given us any power over it. We cannot manufacture love, like steel. We cannot control where love flows, like electrons. We cannot make love sprout from a heart it otherwise wouldn't, like a potato in Idaho or corn in Kansas. We can't even kinda do these things. Therefore, everything we "know" about love must be false. That is, unless I'm missing something. Does anyone know a formula I can use to make a girl fall in love with me? She works at my local coffee shop—brunette, about five-five, smokey eyes. And I don't mean just find me more attractive. I'm talking love me, like follow me into Mordor against all odds type stuff. Seriously—I want numbers. How many cups of compassion do I need? How many pinches of patience? How many grams—or perhaps pounds—of sensuality and lust? If such a thing existed you'd certainly be able to buy it with money, which means rich people would never struggle with love. But brother, do they ever. Look at any tech bro, sports star, or Hollywood celebrity and chances are you'll find a daisy-chain of divorces. Insomniacs are made from the fact that you could have more money than Jeff Bezos, more sex appeal than Margot Robbie, and the Tom Brady of relationship therapists in your corner yet still never find love. All we can do is pray, really. It's no coincidence that all love everywhere starts with the same thought: "Oh my god, I think I'm in love." She always surprises us. No one, no matter how clever, finds their heart captured by another and thinks: "Ah yes, I'm in love—just as I marked it on my calendar." But here's the real kicker: we've had this relationship with love forever. In other words, we haven't “improved" at love at all as a species. Compared to people one-hundred, one-thousand, even ten-thousand years ago, we don't have more love in our lives; we don't fall in love easier; we don't somehow love harder, deeper, or longer (wink).
It makes sense why the ancients personified love as a God, a Goddess, or something else up there, out of our mortal reach—the Greeks had Aphrodite, the Romans had Cupid, the Norse had Freya. They saw how little we know about love. They saw how little power we have over her. But more importantly, the ancients understood an idea we ignore as a limp cliche: love has all the power over us. Love isn't just a concept we fail to grasp. She's an enigmatic force of nature. She can blush over us like a sunset, inspire us, as with a bolt of lightning, or scatter us with indifference like a tornado does a dandelion. And we don't need to look far in time and space to see her at work. She's right here—in our stories, in our actions. Many of us have shouldered great burdens for love. Others have undergone radical transformations for love. And others still have made painful, scarring sacrifices for love. To other people, these actions don't look special; they look just like any other semi-rational decision we'd make to improve our lives, albeit with a little more passion. And so people wonder: “why did she do that?”, “what was he thinking there?” But in the moment, to us—the infernal lover clutching a thorny bouquet—these actions don't come to us as decisions—they come to us as commandments, as marching orders to destiny, that we can disobey no more than we can cut and not bleed. Call it whatever you want: love's spell, God's will, nature's order—it's the reason we're here, and why the otherwise thin December air all around us is saturated with the aroma of fate.
Grace and Jarrett—realize that you two have not fallen in love—you've been chosen by love. You've been chosen for the next episode of the oldest, most dramatic show humans have ever known, a show that's been on air for over one-hundred thousand years, a show that's featured all manner of person—from kings and queens to serfs and slaves, to all the lovely couples here today, a story with a billion episodes—one for each I love you ever confessed between people. No one knows what love has written for you. Neither can anyone amend the script. And for reasons I belabored, we can't even give you any real advice. The only thing I can say with any certainty is this: what love has written for you will be perfectly unique—a story never aired before, and never to be reenacted. How do I know this? Because that's how nature works. Mother nature has cried a million thunderstorms, yet never has her thunder made the same announcement; she's hung a trillion sunsets in the sky, yet never the same painting. Nature may repeat, but she is never redundant. And so it is with the souls she unites. Live it well, love birds. Don't get so caught up in trying to engineer love that you forget what she is. The greatest honor you can pay a sunset is your eyes. The greatest honor you can pay a thunderstorm is your ears.