Conflict Resonance

This is long overdue. Very long overdue.

The first time something like this could’ve happened was when he moved out of the house. We were standing in the garage, cleaning out the rest of his stuff, including the gym equipment that had formed the playground for my first ever consistent weightlifting routine. As we dismantled the squat rack, Josiah kept asking when my emotional goodbye was going to burst out. I was overwhelmed, but unwilling to give in just yet. I had so many thoughts, so much to say. But we were soon no longer alone, and the moment passed.

Little did I know that it would be years before I would say my goodbye in full. Far less predictably still would be the fact that it’d end up as an article for our magazine, whose very existence was spurred by Josiah in the first place.

It’s difficult for me to reflect on this multi-year friendship in a concise way. So I’ll do it through a few different lenses before I go into an all-encompassing metarant.

In the Beginning…

When I first moved in with Josiah, my view of his aesthetic was that of a high school skater punk unwilling to surrender himself to the nerdy physics student identity that dominated his peers. This wasn’t necessarily to a fault, though. Josiah was two years behind me in school, and around the time I met him I was teaching ‘Linux help sessions’ for the third year physics students. In these sessions, I’d do my best to humbly present the younger generation with the benefits of using open source software for their research. This is a bit misleading, however – what would actually happen was a fraternity-esque indoctrination where students would be stripped of everything they knew about using a computer, then build a new system and paradigm from the ground up. It takes a hell of a person to fully taken on this challenge, and Josiah’s alt-punk identity, combined with his insatiable zeal, made him the ideal student.

As time went on, Josiah and I spent increasingly more time together. Not only was he one of the few consistent attendees of the Linux help sessions, but he was also a student in the digital circuits class I TA’d. Additionally, I was responsible for bringing a Wii into the physics computer lab, along with Super Smash Bros. Melee. This was the origin of Josiah and my’s Melee rivalry – more on that later. Suffice to say that there were plenty of times that Josiah, his digital circuits partner Mark, and I were late to class after multiple declarations of ‘just one more match’.

Josiah and I were getting close, as was the time for me to find a new roommate. My roommate at the time, Logan, was off to UT Austin to pursue a doctorate in physics. This was a hard transition for me – Logan and I were practically brothers, as virtually anyone who knew us at the time could attest to. Fortunately, one of Josiah’s roommates was about to move out, and Josiah offered me the room. I was stoked. Choosing a roommate had become a big deal for me, as I’d become keenly aware of the value that a good fit could have on my personal growth. I knew Josiah was a great option. However, I was a poor college student, and my parents were paying my rent. I took them to see the place, and they weren’t particularly stoked on the neighborhood. It wasn’t terrible, per-se, but was certainly more rugged than my previous living situations. We drove by the place once more with my maternal grandparents, and before we’d even left the neighborhood my grandpa’s response was “So, what other options do you have?”. My parents echoed that sentiment at dinner later on and, needless to say, I was not happy. Sure, the neighborhood had some rough edges, but I honestly didn’t mind that (and wanted it, to some degree). But far more important to me was living with Josiah, who I just knew was the right roommate for me at the time. I’d also had a good impression of Dillon, the third roommate we’d live with.

I conveyed my feelings to my parents who, upon seeing the reasons for and strength of my resolve, agreed to sign the lease.

Josiah and God

When I moved in with Josiah, I had a not-particulary-original history with religion. I was raised Baptist, declared myself atheist around the age of 14, and was claiming agnostic-atheist by college. I was also, in my first few years at Mines, increasingly depressed. My love for symbolism in stories, though, stood out even in my most cynical of college years. By year three I was regularly thinking about suicide, and one of the only solaces I found was in the massive emotion that David Tennant’s years on Doctor Who churned in me. Despite the fact that the sci-fi adventures of this British Christ-figure were my most overwhelming source of positive emotion, I felt confident that religion would continue to have no significant impact on my life.

Early into Josiah and my’s friendship, before we were even living together, we’d begun having extensive conversations about Christianity. Unexpectedly, and unlike nearly all of my friends at the time, Josiah was a practicing Christian. I’d become highly disinterested in anything to do with the topic, but Josiah managed to re-awaken my hyper-rational perspective. He relentlessly challenged my thinking on the subject, meeting my concrete stubbornness with a frustrating patience. I’d reluctantly concede minor points after exhaustively contesting every detail he brought up. Even in the face of my obsessively analytical response, Josiah was always willing to engage in our debates and entertain my challenges.

While I was living with Josiah, he started regularly weightlifting in the garage with our now-mutual friend Matt. It wasn’t long before I joined them and we were doing every compound lift we knew nearly every day of the week. This is how I first got to know Matt, along with his propensity for impassioned spikes of abnormal ventures. For example, Matt was responsible for introducing Josiah and me to ‘gallon of milk a day’, or GOMAD. If it’s not already clear, this is where you drink a gallon of milk every day, on top of your normal diet, in order to bulk. Matt, being the totally sane and restrained guy he is, kicked us off by doing it for 20 days (or 25, we’re not quite sure). On some of those days he also threw in SOBAD – stick of butter a day. Word from the wise, butter in coffee is apparently pretty good.

More significant than GOMAD, though, was when Matt introduced Josiah and I to your favorite Canadian clinical psychologist from the University of Toronto: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Peterson’s explorations into mythology, equipped with his psychological toolbelt, were the perfect fuel for Josiah and my’s late night conversations. Initially, and for a long time, Peterson’s points would fall short for me. Even with my love for symbolism, my path through Peterson’s work had to go through his Personality course, which reasons largely with statistical methods, before delving into the much more existential Maps of Meaning lectures. Josiah watched the lectures before I did, so after each episode I’d come to him with every point of contention, confusion, or both. It was only through countless hours of meticulously scrutinizing Peterson’s ideas, deconstructing my own beliefs, and expanding my perspective that I was ultimately able to integrate the many benefits of Peterson’s takes on psychology, symbolism, and meaning into my thinking. Though, to the chagrin of my agnostic/atheist friends, I went through a period where I’d take spiritual conversations as an opportunity to redefine ‘religion’ as ‘having a core value that you live by, whether by conscious choice or otherwise’ and cheekily proclaim that no one was truly atheist under this definition.

Further into our time living together, Josiah started a ‘lifegroup’ through his church. After being offered to attend numerous times, and probably losing a bet, I joined one of the sessions. Matt joined as well, and for about five months we both regularly attended church events three times a week: lifegroup on Tuesdays, young adults (YA) church on Thursdays, and ‘big church’ on Saturday evenings. While Peterson had given me a psychological take on religion that I found palatable, I still found regular old church Christians unrelatable. So, with Josiah’s pushing and Matt’s kinship as a fellow ‘fake Christian’, I decided to give vanilla Christianity a chance. Here are a few of the notable points of my experience:

1. In lifegroup, I realized I could internally translate to and from standard Christian terminology in a way that allowed me to have productive conversations with believers while not compromising my own beliefs.
2. At YA, I discovered a pastor that spoke about biblical stories in a way that I could get behind (shoutout to Chad, ex- Red Rocks YA). Further, I came to accept that the pastors who I found less palatable were necessary for those who thought differently from me.
3. Finally, and the one that easily took me the longest to come to terms with: sometimes Christian music isn’t so bad in small doses.

The amount of missed detail in this section could easily generate several lengthy articles. This transformative (and often arduous) journey made me far more sympathetic to Christians, and to religion in general; it both deepened and hardened my love for symbolism and story like no other; and, while I don’t regularly attend church at this point, it made the occasional sermon with my mom enjoyable and positive, rather than an hour of trying not to fall asleep…at least not as often. Josiah’s fortitude through my spiritual voyage, as both a guide and a friend, is the core reason I was able to reach the point where, when someone asks me if I’m religious, I assuredly respond with “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..”.

Josiah and…

Living with Josiah affected other, more concrete aspects of my life, including but not limited to…

Romcoms: I was always susceptible to the emotional pull of a good romcom, but it wasn’t until living with Josiah that I was compromised. Crazy, Stupid, Love is the best romcom of all time. If you consider Swingers a romcom, then that’s in the top 5. And the only way to experience the Before Trilogy is in a single sitting.

Melee: Super Smash Bros. Melee has one of the coolest developments of any game ever. Released in 2001 and initially conceived as a party game, the underground competitive fighting game community that formed around it is going strong to this day. However, my negative characterization of the awkward, unshowered Fox main practicing their waveshines for 16 hours a day didn’t necessarily reflect the type of person I wanted to be. Interestingly, Josiah was into Melee as well, and helped me get over my judgement by simply being a hip guy I knew who loved the game as much as I did. Our Melee rivalry has evolved greatly throughout our friendship. And every time I grind away with another friend and think I’m improving beyond Josiah, he’ll come in and kick my ass after having not played in over a month. The mental game of Melee should not be underestimated, and it’s been a blast to continually improve (and occasionally rage) in tandem with Josiah.

Fashion: Another aspect of my identity that took me years to accept and develop was my love for fashion. I’d been very lax on this front in the years leading up to our friendship, even sometimes dragging my flip flops across the Colorado School of Mines campus in a hoodie and pajama pants. At my best I still had a good internal fashion sense that I would express, and Josiah took notice. After much resistance to his influence, arguing that I didn’t want to dress just like him, I accepted his input and found my own style that has benefited me in various ways (particularly around identity, and, unexpectedly, routine).

Devin Townsend: @Josiah one of the first ideas I had for this post was a grandiose metarant relating you and Devin Townsend at the most intimate existential levels. I decided against it.

Josiah and The Attic

This magazine, The Attic, exists for a few reasons that reveal pieces of Josiah’s identity.

Early into knowing Josiah he gave me a zine titled Indoor Kids, in which he and his best friend Kota transcribed interviews they did with several punk/alternative bands. To be honest, I didn’t know any of the bands so I never fully read it, but I always thought it was sick that they’d made it. And I figured the primary reason he gave it to me was so I’d think he was cool (though I am into The Menzingers now, two members of which are featured in the zine). The Attic itself is very much DIY, having been built from the ground up using the types of open source tools Josiah and I bond over.

Beyond the aesthetic choice of The Attic as a DIY online magazine, the content and contributors reflect the colorful group of friends collected by this madman. Christian and existential philosophy; personal narrative and reflection; a God of War review by a self-proclaimed non-gamer; the story of a friendship as expressed via an increasingly meta narrative – the ideas that weave throughout the fabric of The Attic are a reflection of the sitcom-esque cast of characters that Josiah is primarily responsible for bringing together.

Josiah and Manhood

One additional catalyst for the creation of this magazine was a personal blog that I had up for about a year. On it, I would occasionally post unedited stream-of-consciousness anecdotes. Generally, these stories would detail my interactions with women. See, I’ve only had a couple of girlfriends – one for about a month in high school, and another for a year and ten months that ended a few years ago. Despite this, the last year and half has encompassed substantial growth in my mentality and approach to relationships.

In one of the more recent experiences, I’d met a woman from Boston on a weekend that she was visiting friends in Denver. We hit it off exceptionally well, and the potential I saw in a relationship with her was so apparent and exciting that I considered what a long-distance setup would look like. Bringing it up to her terrified me, but a push from Josiah got me to send a particularly forward message. We proceeded to hash it out over extensive text and phone exchanges. My goal wasn’t necessarily to make a long-distance relationship happen with her. Rather, it was to push the conversation in a way that explored all relevant avenues to the point of a clear choice. In short: the outcome didn’t matter, it just needed to be certain. To get there, I had to engage in honest, humble, and direct dialogue, followed by reflective intermissions to reassess my motivations and determine whether continuing still made sense. In the end, she came to important realizations about her past and what she wanted, and as such decided to date a guy who lived in her town that she’d previously hesitated on. Despite this being the end, I was glad she was able to make the choice she felt was right, and the extent to which I challenged both myself and her remains one of the most valuable endeavors of my life.

Even more core to my growth, and to Josiah and my’s friendship, was my odyssey with a coffee shop barista (and eventual bartender). When I asked for her number, I was two days into a five day fast (also spurred by Josiah). While this was a solid start, successfully going on a date with her turned out to be comically difficult. Countless times she’d agree to a date, only to flake on it when the time came; I would find a reason to blame myself for what’d happened, then talk through it with Josiah in painstaking detail, and he’d encourage me to go back and visit her; I’d then be engulfed by the dread of facing her again, and upon overcoming that fear she’d give me an unexpectedly positive response and a reassuring declaration that our date would happen. This went on for a few months, at which point I decided that it made sense to stop…only to have it rekindle many months later, where the cycle continued.

This was a long and arduous journey, one that I preemptively thought was over countless times. I had to overcome constant floods of negative judgment of myself through her eyes and subsequent fear of each visit. But that negative judgement eventually transformed into a humbleness in just how little of an understanding I had of her life and perspective, as well as tuning my focus to include the positive signs she gave me; and the fear slowly became an acceptance that all outcomes would result in growth, and in turn I (eventually…) became excited before each visit. Each attempt at a date was an exercise in creativity, communication, and self-expression.

All of this culminated into one momentous day. I spent an entire afternoon and evening at the bar while she was working. She shared details about the stressful day she was having, her past relationships, and her family, interspersed with the occasional self-deprecating comment. After an emotional rollercoaster of a day that included strange interactions with other bar patrons, her shift ended and I proceeded to go into a meta monologue that highlighted the strengths I saw in her as a response to everything she’d shared with me. It resonated with her deeply, and allowed me to express previously unsaid things to her in a manner that was decidedly me. Afterward, I called Josiah to share the update with him. He immediately understood the significance of what’d happened, and that cheesy son of a bitch requested a moment of silence. I don’t know anyone else who would’ve responded that way, and it was exactly the correct response.

But communicating the gravity of that evening to only Josiah wasn’t enough. As he’d done with prior experiences, he asked that I share it with others via a post on my blog. That blog had originally formed from existential journal entries I’d type up and send to one friend throughout college. I eventually wanted to share my thoughts with a few more people, so I put them on a blog to ease distribution. But I hadn’t yet shared something so personal with an audience wider than a few select friends. I knew Josiah was right, though. So I wrote up a 7000 word unstructured stream-of-consciousness that reflected my internal thought process on what’d happened. Fear of judgement had me terrified of sharing this post, especially with friends who I’d known since middle school. I sent it out, however, and the response I got was…really good. The format and length made it a difficult read for some, but the ones who got through it expressed strong positive feelings about the story and appreciation of my vulnerability.

After everything, she and I never went on a single date. And yet, as ridiculous as this all sounds, I don’t know that I’ve ever been on a more valuable expedition. I was forced to confront confidence issues, challenge my view of manhood, and truly internalize the idea that any outcome of a situation approached with courage and honesty is a success.

Josiah and the Big Picture

Underlying all of these examples of Josiah’s influence are his core strengths. He has a willingness and ability to engage in conflict and uncomfortable topics like no other. His open-mindedness and sympathy to others’ perspectives contribute to his tactful communication skills. His proclivity toward unique personalities and ideas distinguish his identity from both generic punk skaters and Christians. Maybe the most concise way to sum this up is with our friend and prominent Attic contributor Joe’s apt superlative of Most Likely to Become a Cult Leader.

I never thought I’d have a friend who could possibly influence my life more than the ones I’d already accumulated: Ian, my absurdly creative best friend since sixth grade; Rainer, my roommate who I long viewed as a better and further-along version of me; Logan, my roommate who was practically my brother; and Everett, my Linux-sensei who is ridiculously productive while high. Josiah took that assumption and smashed it to bits. While at first he seemed drastically different from me in nearly every regard, our similarities have fallen out of the sieve of our long-winded, and often contentious, friendship. In many ways, our differences define our friendship, and have fueled tremendous growth for me. I am eternally grateful for the aspects of my personality that have been highlighted, encouraged, and challenged by Josiah.