Talking to Ethan is like no one I’ve ever met before. There is no dance of small talk; instead we jump into the deep end without looking back — I know his thoughts on death, god, and consciousness before I know if he has any siblings. 

Our second week of work, I set up a recurring meeting with Ethan called “existential crisis”. 

The meeting invite goes something like this:

We can change the name of this invite, I just really like the idea of every other week a calendar reminder popping up that says “reminder: existential crisis in 15 minutes” and then I can be like “snooze”.

Ideally, we will figure out the answer to the meaning of life. I'm breaking this up into a couple sessions to allow for some debate. Hoping to get the end deliverable in front of humanity in the next ~70 years or so, though the timeline is pretty flexible – let’s test and learn here.”

It includes a set of questions that we never really answer but love to discuss. 

We begin to feel like explorers passing light to each other down the dark tunnel of life; we never quite see what’s ahead, but we are keen to notice the walls, the ground beneath us. The journey is more interesting alongside Ethan. 

We discover almost immediately that we are both a strange combination of dreamy romantics and practical realists; we love both the poetry of love and the sense of it. We are passionate about the dual roles of chemistry and compatibility. We wonder often what it means to grow alongside a partner: what kinds and how much change is okay?

This is how we come to be confidants in the evolution of our separate relationships, where we puzzle over our pain and our dreams alike. He shares the story of his high school relationship with a girl named Sara, who came to define much of who he sees himself to be today, as well as his views on love. I tell him about my boyfriend James, and the way our relationship has evolved with time. I celebrate with Ethan as he meets a new, promising girl named Lauren, and wonder with him as the relationship takes winding turns that deliver him to a long chapter of heartbreak. 

We are finding ourselves, separately and together, in these years after college has ended. After many chapters of defining ourselves in relation to others, it is now that we begin to peel back our own layers to see what it is that makes up the substance of our souls. It is existential and confusing — the kinds of questions to which answers escape words, but still we try.

Our conversations are, as much as anything else, status updates on our formation as people. 

But in a world where most people we know don't ask these questions at all, it sure helps to know that we are not alone.