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Community leaders, institutions, and even entire communities can inspire us to do great work ourselves. They can serve as role models, spark new ideas in us, or provide us with a place to place our energy. There are a great deal of community members and places left unsung or only recognized by a narrow population and while we can never show all of the people that deeply affect and serve their communities, we hope to shine a light on and share the stories of some of those people and places and what they mean to their community.
August 4, 2017
Submitted by: James Riley
Kristen Recine is my best friend. She is not my closest confidant, she is not my partner in crime, and she is not my bff. But out of all the people I have ever met, she is the best at being a friend. She might be the best person I have ever met period. I have many wonderful friends, and to them I apologize if this is an insult. I hope they can take solace in the fact that they too can have her friendship, if they meet her but once. If you haven't had the pleasure, I do highly recommend. Kristen would be a friend to even the Devil.
I have always been insecure with friendships. I have often felt like Frosty the Snowman, a person in the same state of arrested development, coming to play with my friends but finding them, increasingly, a year older, a year wiser, a year changed and grown. It is true that I have a certain level of immaturity. I am foolish and not as preoccupied with the more practical aspects of adulthood as many of my peers are. I talk too much, I drink too much. I have urinated in places I shouldn't. I am often embarrassed by the things I have said and done. I am constantly pushing away the idea that just after I leave the room, the scene receives the popular alternative New Yorker caption: "Christ, what an asshole." But never, not once, have I doubted Kristen's friendship.
Aristotle said that a friend to all is a friend to none. Just another in a long line of examples of why Aristotle was wrong about everything. Morrissey said it takes strength to be gentle and kind. Which is just another example of my working theory that Morrissey is a better life guide than Aristotle in every way. I would add that being kind and gentle also takes bravery. Love is not diminished by giving it out gratis. Scooping it out to others does not empty the carton nor make it taste any different whether you are sharing it with ten or ten thousand. What kind of monster would keep love exclusively for those that deserve it and from those that need it the most? A coward like me looks at the bravery of Kristen with true envy.
It is one thing to want to love, and quite another to radiate it. It is one thing to ask what you can do to help and another to know and just help. Kristen has the kindest heart I have ever witnessed up close, but it is also the most effective and seemingly effortless. There are other people that want to love, want to show it, want to feel it. Kristen is it.
I am currently embarking on a long trip and sitting in a Taco Bell outside of Norfolk, VA thinking that I have made a terrible mistake. But I have just read a note that Kristen has given me and without her possibly knowing it, it was exactly what I needed when I needed it most. I wanted to read it on the massive bridge in the Chesapeake Bay, but I missed the turn for the gift shop. Picturesque, I would have expounded about the wide openness of journeys and oceans, of connections, and all that crap. But now, that I am full of doubt and alone, the note, like a gift given by a wizard or elf queen out of some sort of fantasy book, is a light to look on in dark times.
It would come as no surprise to those who know me personally that I was deeply hurt by the past election. I have been angry. I hate everyone who made the stupid and dangerous decision to hand over the control of this country to a deeply ignorant hateful bully, the same way that I would hate them if they drove drunk and hit a loved one of mine. Perhaps you understand that, perhaps you don't. But I do not like that about myself. I do not like that I am afraid of letting go of that hate, because I do not want to think that unacceptable behavior is acceptable.
Kristen, here too, has given me a light. Part of my trip is trying to find a way to come to terms with the fact that I woke up on November 8th and found that there are more literal monsters in this country than I thought. Thankfully no one who I directly care about was, but many of the relatives of those I do did make that horrible choice. I must ask myself, "What if instead of my loved one being hit by a drunk driver, my loved one was a drunk driver?" It could happen. Anyone could conceivably make such a terrible mistake. I have been drunk. I have made bad decisions. I certainly would still be mad at them, even hate them. But there would be a part of my heart that would, if not forgive them, at least try to love them again.
Kristen showed me around Bryn Mawr College, the place where she earned her master's degree and made herself part of the community. We met again later at another wonderful friend's birthday party. That was at Dickinson College, the school Kristen and I attended as undergraduates together. Kristen was in fact one of my first two friends at the school. More than that, she introduced me to many of my best friends there. If she had not introduced herself to me, I would have had a much lonelier time at school. I could have very well been miserable for four years. I can never thank her enough for saying hello.
The rejection cost of talking to strangers is not high. Someone somewhere that you will never speak to again might think you are a weirdo. But the potential reward is so high that it seems strange that so many of us do not make the investment. It can be even harder to reach out to strangers you have reason to distrust, because they have nothing in common with you or your worldview. Still, it might be worth it.
Kristen Recine is my best friend because even when she is not she is.