Love is all you need

This past weekend, my son George married my new daughter-in-law, the brilliant and beautiful, newly-minted Lauren Duffy, among the most joyful events of my life. To this moment, Julie and I are basking, through hoarse and raspy voices, in the afterglow.

It was so beautiful, emotional, life-altering, exhilarating, connecting, fun, funny, dizzyingly fast, all the things.

I’ll have a lot more to say about that in upcoming posts. I’m gonna be processing my feelings about George and Lauren’s wedding for a while. Suffice to say, it was beyond good. All joy.

And the entire event reminded me of something about myself, or perhaps I learned something new I didn’t know about me. I’m going to focus on that here.

Over the past couple of decades, I’ve pretty much convinced myself that I’m a sneaky introvert in extrovert’s clothing. I seem like an outgoing guy. I know I can read that way with ease, for a while. I can pull it off for a couple of hours. But for a lot of big events (well-attended birthday or holiday parties, for instance, as well as weddings it seems), I would greet a few people enthusiastically, already planning a temporary Irish goodbye. After a while alone strumming a guitar, writing a Substack or catching up on Netflix, I’d Irish return. During any event, I can pull this stunt several times. The later in the night, and the more people drink, the easier the ruse.

In my life, I have definitely seemed like a full-on extrovert an awful lot of the time. If you ask most people I know, that would be my designated label. But I would disappear on the regular to charge my own batteries, the classic hallmark of the introvert.

Parties are, of course, not the only circumstance under which I’ve acted the extrovert. From book signings to radio and TV appearances to hours-long presentations, I’ve been able to muster the energy and juice to play the part pretty well.

But historically, I’ve too often white-knuckled my way through, pressing through anxiety, eager for the last line, the step off stage.

The problem with playing the role, of course, is that you’re never truly, fully present in the moment. Your mind is in action mode until you’re alone, and you’re depleted.

You also feel a bit isolated up there and, speaking for myself, there’s a certain judgment that persistently has my concern. And I realize it’s not the judgment of others. People are kind and forgiving and encouraging on the whole. No, it’s my own judgment that has concerned me in the past, has haunted me at times.

For the five years that Steve Harvey hosted a TV show taping in Chicago, I was a regular guest. I can recall coming home countless times from those shows. Julie would ask how it went, and I would honestly have no idea. I’d watch the occasional segment, on which I would appear, and have literally no recall of it, despite having spent the better part of a day or two rehearsing beats and going over lines with producers.

I started to lose track of whether I wanted the call from a producer or not.

But something was radically different this past weekend, at George and Lauren’s wedding. A little background: this wedding was a big affair, nearly two years in the making, with nearly 200 friends and family, from both sides of the families, on the invite list, almost every one of whom showed.

Also, George and Lauren asked me to officiate, and I was just so honored, the honor of a lifetime. Now, I’ve done hundreds of speaking events over the years, some of them several hours long. But this half hour affair was more important to me than the rest of them combined.

Yeah, the stakes were high.

Add to that the fact that my entire family would be in attendance, as well as all of my closest friends, not to mention those of George and Lauren’s, and the stakes felt as if they were climbing steeply.

So, over the past many months, I’ve spent countless hours worrying, writing, rewriting, scrapping entire stories in utter frustration, and polishing the wedding ‘script’ until it seemed just right. It was a process.

As the day drew near, my anxiety began to rise. What if I mess up? Fall apart? Forget the script altogether? In front of everyone?

Well, that would be a disastrous end for me, the catastrophe I knew would hit at some point.

So I doubled-down on prep, getting up in the middle of some nights to make sure the beats hit just right, the intonation worked, and it all seemed effortless.

Then, the day came, this past Saturday. And I woke up feeling joyful, present, in the moment entirely.

It felt….weird.

Mid-afternoon on wedding day, I went and visited George and his many groomsmen as they got dressed, laughing and eating and drinking and having an absolute blast pre-celebrating the big day. This is the greatest group of guys, and it was so fun hanging out with them for a while.

Then, I went to my room as Julie was getting ready. And I fell asleep. I didn’t rehearse. I didn’t fret. I slept. Soundly. Very unusual for me.

And I woke up excited and joy-filled. I couldn’t wait to see George and Lauren, and all of our people. I couldn’t wait to play my role in their wedding. I felt no nerves, just excitement.

Have I been mistaking and mislabeling excitement with anxiety forever?

In short, it all went beautifully. I loved every moment of it. And I was there, fully present, for every single second.

No Irish goodbyes. Just laughing and dancing and storytelling and spontaneous hugging, SO much hugging, until the DJ struck the final note and the lights came on.

And I have to ask myself: why did this event feel so very different? And here’s the God’s honest truth. It was the love. This entire day was about the love that George and Lauren share with each other, and that love spread throughout the weekend to every single person in attendance. Missing a moment wasn’t a choice. Presence was automatic. Why pass over the sharing of love? It’s why we’re here, on this spinning orb, for crying out loud.

And I find myself so grateful.

And I also find myself reflecting, in the last day or two, about the love I may have missed in some other past events, stuck in my own head, ruminating and stewing in my own toxic thoughts, assuming judgment.

Assuming judgment when, I’m learning more and more in my life, we’re here for the learning, for the experiences, for the lessons, all of that. But in the end, it’s all about the love. It doesn’t matter how you charge your battery or label yourself. If love is present, and love is virtually always present, introverts, extroverts and ambiverts can all share the same experiences and energy.

These days can be confounding, dark and harsh and unpredictably frightening. And I know how easy it can be to miss the love in favor of toxicity, politics, pointless ancient grudges, fear around how we come across to others.

But these events aren’t about any of that. This brief life isn’t about any of that. It’s this simple, beautiful, but most important reality that we all need to keep in mind, vigorously. It turns out that love is the thing. It may well be the only thing that matters.

All you need is love. Love is all you need.