Oh, Brother
This may surprise some of you. I am a member of a fraternity. Now, before you go thinking Animal House, or “Robot House!” – No, we are not one of those fraternities. We are a service fraternity. We exist to provide service to the University music program. Of course, we also exist to provide a social bond amongst our members. As with any organization, every so often we enter a transition period. We are in one of those now I feel, and it has left me contemplating a very important concept of our institution: Brotherhood. Brotherhood is an important concept not just to us, but to anyone who belongs to a fraternal organization – be it social, service, honorary or professional. It is an important concept that defines part of our existence.
I have the pleasure to share my fraternal experiences with perhaps the most eclectic and crazy group of people I have the pleasure to know. What can I say we are band geeks. We laugh together, “hang” together, tease each other about just about everything, share our jokes, our fears and occasionally our tears together. We are absolutely merciless to each other but we are also the first to support one another. And yes, we fight. We are human it happens. We are family, it happens. I have said before you have two families: Yes, you have the one you are born into, who you grow up with day-by-day. That family (for better or worse) cannot be helped. But, you also have the family you pick; consisting of those people you have found in your life and decided, “I want them to be a part of my life.” Joining a fraternity is the most explicit way to demonstrate you want someone to be part of your life. It is so much a part that I am confounded when people do not seem to understand that.
I have seen my organization and others run the gamut from one extreme to another. Generally, yes, we all get along but sometimes if even one person does something slightly wrong, or that another disagrees with, I have seen tensions rise. I have seen people come dangerously close to, and sometimes cross, the line between genuine, relevant fraternal complaint to blatant personal attacks. Again, we are family it happens. There is no rule that says families must get along all the time. But, being a Brother is not a temporary assignment. It does not end when the meeting is over, the ceremony concluded. It does not end when we leave each other’s presence for the day any more than being a son/daughter, mother/father, wife/husband ends when one leaves the home for the day. If you return home after 15 years, you will still call your parents mom and dad. Your parents will still call you son (or daughter as the case may be). If I see you 15years, or 15 minutes, after our last meeting, I will still call you Brother.
That is part of the blessing, and perhaps yes the curse, of being a Brother. It is a choice you make, that you cannot back away from simply because it is inconvenient. I provide a quote here from one of my favorite authors that I find particularly applicable, “I don’t care whose DNA recombined with whose. When everything goes to Hell, the people who stand by you without flinching – they are your family.”
I will admit, do I approve of every action my Brothers make? Or every word that they say? No, not hardly, but I would prepare to defend them to God Himself if they asked me to. Because we are family, and nothing changes that.
I am a proud member of the Zeta Mu Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi, National Honorary Band Fraternity. AEA.
