YOLO, Epic

Saturday evening, I officiated Jillian and Lev’s wedding ceremony at Legends Hall at the Marq, in Southlake, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Lev begins the story of how he met Jillian, “It was just another night out with my boys going to see a DJ perform at a concert hall called The Pageant. I had a few friends over at my place before we went to the concert and we were planning on having an epic night as usual.” For those of you over 30, according to the popular slang site, Rachel’s English, epic is “a much-used term, added as an adjective before anything, to mean ‘great’, ‘huge’, ‘awesome’, ‘the best!’” Little did Lev know how epic this night would be…

Now, Jillian’s description starts a little weak but stay with it, “I wasn’t a huge fan of this particular DJ (yikes!) and I rarely went out on Thursday nights, but when you’re single, why not go? Back in 2016, I would have probably said this was a ‘YOLO’ moment for me. (YOLO – You only live once.) I knew the night would be fun regardless.”

Again, for those of you who were not teenagers in 2012, that same year Buzzfeed News defined YOLO, a term popularized by the most famous Canadian Jew, Drake, thus: “YOLO is to recklessly pursue fun while throwing long-term consequences to the wind. YOLO is the worry-free rallying cry of youth shaking off the hairshirt of the pressures of the current times.” As Drake’s ancestors would have said, “Mann tracht, un gott lacht.”

That is one of the only phrases I know in Yiddish, the High-German derived language, spoken by Lev’s and my forebears. It means man plans and God laughs, and if you know even a little about European, especially Eastern European, Jewish history, you know that this simple phrase contains much more depth and nuance than might be present in your average assortment of five words.

I have been thinking about this phrase because this period in which Jillian and Lev have been planning their wedding has given new meaning to this phrase. There are lessons this period is teaching us if we choose to heed them.

One of those central lessons is that we have been fooling ourselves if we think that life abides by some mathematical formula; work hard, play by the rules, and success will automatically follow, was always a bit of a ridiculous proposition. We in the American middle and certainly upper classes, though, if we squinted just a little, could imagine that it was true, and it sometimes made us judge those that did not seem to fit into to that neat formula.

These last 13 months, however, have disabused of this pretentious understanding, so alien to the Abrahamic tradition. It has made many of us kinder, more understanding, more forgiving of others and of ourselves. We have understood that we all need to be extended just a little grace, or maybe more than a little.

A true partnership in life becomes so much more important when you view the world in this light. It makes what Jillian says about Lev’s role in her life so much more poignant: “I’ve finally found someone special that I’m ready to share a life with. I’ve found someone who I love deeply and also have a great relationship with. I’ve learned from past experiences that these two things do not always go hand in hand, so when you find it, you need to cherish it… We have… a true understanding for one another. We laugh together, cry together, agree, disagree. I can truly be myself around him. He loves me and accepts me just as I am, and I love and accept him in return…”

And Lev echoes this sentiment: “I think life is meant to be spent with a person you love and can grow with for the rest of your life. I believe finding a partner that supports you, encourages you, and brings you happiness is very important… Jillian… met all of those characteristics… that made me fall in love with her even more… She is the person who consoles me… the person I look forward to seeing every day, and the person who puts the biggest smile on my face… I want to build a life together filled with lots of memories and adventures that we can call our own.”