This is the speech I gave at the 2026 Summer Solstice at VibeCamp 5. The theme of was appreciating what we’ve got.

Good evening, everyone. I’m grateful to all of you for being here and I’m especially grateful to Wes for coordinating VibeCamp Solstice for the last several years and for giving me an opportunity to talk to you. Gratitude is what I’m here to talk to you about, actually. But first, I want to tell you about my friend. 

Justin was a dear friend to me, and to all who knew him. He was always generous with his time and cared for people. He’s the kind of guy who called my mom to wish her a happy birthday every year.

One thing I learned from his death is something we all know abstractly but few of us internalize. We don’t have all the time in the world and we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Once we internalize that, what should we do next? What kind of life would we want for ourselves and our loved ones? 

Justin had his whole life planned out. He’d been saving for retirement since high school, with the idea that he’d retire in his early 40s and spend the decades after that really living - traveling, enjoying himself, doing the things he’d set aside. He’d wanted to go to Vietnam for years. He never made it.

When I got up to speak at his memorial, I had nothing. I’d been composing something in my head for weeks, and in that moment, in front of a hundred people, all of it disappeared. I don’t really remember what I said. But I think I know now what I’d say, if I could go back. And that’s most of what I want to share with you tonight. I think he was worried about the same thing a lot of us worry about: he didn’t give himself permission to be fully happy and instead decided to postpone it for a future that never came. 

Justin’s death made me realize I’d been waiting too - in the small, quiet way most of us do, without ever really noticing. Waiting until I’d worked hard enough, or things had settled down, or I’d finally earned the right to feel good. I spent a couple of years after he passed going back through a lot of old, classic wisdom about happiness and the present moment - stoic stuff, the kind of thing that sounds obvious until you actually need it.

And eventually I landed somewhere pretty simple. That feeling I’d been waiting to earn? I could just give myself permission to have it now. Not all the time - I’m not claiming some permanent state of bliss. But a lot of the time. More than I’d been allowing.

Here’s the thing about permission, though - it’s not really a feeling you summon. It’s more like a stance. It’s deciding, ahead of time, that you’re allowed to feel good about something. And gratitude is what happens the moment you point that stance at anything at all. Gratitude isn’t a separate mood layered on top of happiness - it’s the noticing itself. It’s what happiness looks like when you actually look at it.

A few months ago I had a small realization that’s stuck with me. You know the scene in every time-travel or alternate-universe story - the moment the main character is reunited with someone they thought they’d lost forever, and they’re just overcome with gratitude, for something as simple as that person being alive, being in the room?

We don’t have to wait for a different universe for that. Look around you right now. The people next to you. The fact that you get to be here, tonight, under this sky. Nothing dramatic needs to happen first. The gratitude is already available - it’s already here. All it takes is turning toward it.

None of us know how much time we have left, but we can enjoy the time we have. This moment, right now, tonight - it’s the only place happiness ever actually lives. Not the version of it you’re planning for someday. This one.

Justin didn’t get a someday. None of us are guaranteed one. So my hope for you tonight is simple: give yourself permission, the way I had to learn to. Look around. Notice what’s here. I think you’ll find there’s more to be grateful for than you expected - starting with each other, and with this moment, right now.

Thank you.