Here’s an old post that was very popular when first published. It’s very short, but the message is a powerful one.

After I hit the “publish” button, I’m outta here, headed to the lake for a long weekend of camping. I hope you guys have as good a time as I plan to!

Me: Hi Jamie!

Jamie: Hi! Your boy was here when I came in this morning.

Me: Ah!

Jamie: Yeah, we were talking about gays and lesbians and bisexuality.

Me: Good! Does he want to share something about that, maybe?

Jamie: What?

Me: Does he want to share anything on the topic?

Jamie: Yeah, well, I was sitting in the car, and there was a very passionate, beautiful speech on one of the talk shows, and I looked up and there he was. I was all teared up from this really moving speech.

Me (touched): Awww.

Jamie: And he asked, “Are you okay?” and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, “You wanna talk about it?” So, I said, ‘No, no, I was just listening.” And he goes, “The gays and lesbians?”

Me: Aw, you know he did that a lot with his friends. He’d always ask them, “Do you wanna talk about it” when they seemed to be struggling with something. In fact, I was looking at all of his Facebook messages months after he died, because I have his passcode and stuff, and he was always messaging them with phrases like, “Do you wanna talk” or “How can I help,” or “I’m here if you need a friend.”

Jamie (touched): Aw, really? God. (pause) Oh, that’s so sweet. And you know, he kind of followed me around for 20 minutes to make sure I was okay. He goes, “You’re right, it’s not fair. People need equality.”

Me: Yeah.

Jamie: And he goes, “It just comes down to people’s evaluations of other people.”

Me: Yeah. (Two “yeah’s” in a row. Sounding a little like Rain Man now.)

Jamie: And then we got into the topic of, uh, if people could observe the fact, there’d be a lot more happy emotions in life.

Me: What fact?

Jamie: There’s a difference between observation and evaluation. Most people evaluate something, but they think it’s there observation of it.

Me: Exactly! You know, we’re not here to judge. The universe does a good job at that.

Erik finally chimes in with a guffaw.

Me: Love is love is love is love as far as I’m concerned. Maybe that’s the main thing the LGBT population is here to teach us.

Jamie: That’s really cool what he said about the difference between observation and evaluation.

Me: It is! Good work, Erik! (Pause) Now for a REALLY deep subject—Lukas wants to know where his wallet is.

Jamie and Erik both laugh.

Okay, so I felt a little guilty that this was so short, so I’ll include my latest YouTube here: