A Funeral, a WhatsApp Group, and Four Old Friends in Four Countries
The author of a Psyche essay recounts that two years ago he attended the funeral of someone he had known who had taken his own life at 40. None of the man's family had known he was even unhappy. Afterwards he called three old friends — men he had related to in the same way for 30 years — and pitched an idea for the four of them to meet regularly. Because they live in four different countries, that meant meeting online. All three said yes without reservation, and he writes that he had underestimated the need.
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The moment the WhatsApp group appeared, one of them cracked that they were surely meant to talk about hunting and power tools. The author took it as embarrassment, a group of men not used to consciously being men and unsure what that even asks of them. That joke is the whole problem in miniature: the reflex to make the subject absurd arrives before anyone has said a real sentence.
Having a veteran organiser is not the same as having a template. The author was the only one of the four used to this kind of thing — years of spiritual retreats, crying in sharing circles, all-night ayahuasca sessions where he told strangers things he had rarely shared. He also notes this was different. Vulnerability practised on strangers and vulnerability practised on men who have known you for three decades are separate skills, and the second one is not taught at a retreat.