This I Believe

Growing up in a family with three older brothers has shown me no matter how different we all are there is always one thing that keeps us all connected. It is our strong love for each other. I believe that there isn’t a more powerful type of love than a brother’s love for his brothers. A husband loves his wife, friends love each other, and kids love their parents, but a brother loving a brother is deeper in its own specific way. Brothers are capable of reading each other’s minds. They are connected in some way beyond measure. They’d fight a bully for you, they’d take your side in an argument even when they know you’re wrong, and they’d hide a ticket from your mom and dad even if it puts them at risk of getting in trouble. They’re there for you when you’re sad and they rejoice with you when you’re happy. A brother’s love goes beyond the words. It is a beautiful thing to be a part of, and nothing else can come close to being as powerful as brothers’ love for each other.

Brothers can predict how each other feel just by looking in their eyes. I know this because I’ve seen it in my brother Scott. He moved out of our parent’s house a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a long progress for him to save the money and to find the right house. Then came the moving day before you knew it and I was helping him pack up all that he had known until now. Childhood memories of all my brothers and I playing together and fighting. All the times that it was just he and I hanging out flowed through my mind and I could tell he was thinking about all these memories too. I could see it in his eyes. I made eye contact, and in that instance I knew it was going to be different. We wouldn’t be able to share our love with each other in person everyday anymore. He wouldn’t be there when I got home from school to just hang out and joke with me. He was moving onto a new life, but his eyes told me that he was scared and sad to be moving on. I packed the last of his things in the car, and he stayed downstairs in his room. I walked back down to find him kneeling in the center of the room. He was crying. I knelt next to him and started to cry too. Neither one of us spoke, we didn’t have to. We knew what each other were feeling. It was all around us for our senses to recognize. When we got up, we hugged each other and he looked at me and said, “I’ve wanted to move out for a while, but I now know what was holding me back. I couldn’t leave everybody because I don’t want you guys to forget me. You all mean so much to me, you’ve taught me what I need to survive in the real world and formed who I am. This family has been such a big part of me that I didn’t know if I could make it without all of you by my side every day. I love you.” All I could say was I love you too, and that we are going to be with him every day, maybe not physically but in his words and actions.

My love for my brothers cannot be broken no matter the distance. My love for my brother who moved out, the one living in Springfield, MO while he goes to college, and the one that still lives at home is so great. They’ve changed my life and made me the person that I am today. They have had so much influence on me that my love for them isn’t even close to being a big enough thank you for what they’ve done for me. It is the most powerful thank you that I can give them though.

There are many types of love, each special in their own way, but love between brothers sticks out from the rest in my mind. This type of love is being a shoulder for the other to cry on, it is a hand to give a high five to, it is helping a brother move in to his new home, it is staying up late waiting for that brother to get home after a long road trip to visit from college, and most importantly it is looking into their eyes and seeing their emotions, seeing their life and doing whatever you can for them. I believe that a brother’s love for his brothers is the most unique love one can have because you can’t experience the power of it unless you have a brother. It’s different from the rest and that is why I’m proud to say, “I love my brothers more than anything in the world.”

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