Breckenridge
I took a break from interviews on the road to catch up on miles driving. There’s a flight to catch in San Fransisco and my detours were taking their toll on my arrival time. This led me through Breckenridge on August 9th. I have the haziest of memories of this ski town from a childhood trip. In the summer, it’s much more like a meticulously crafted model maker’s town. Consistent, clean signage announces restaurants and souvenir shops in a single aesthetic voice.
Most people here broadcast their “family-on-vacation” status with clear accents, or long sleeve Cubs shirts. My general goal is to speak with people who are of the place but Breckenridge posed a particular challenge. After several false starts, I found Pete Hansen sitting contemplatively on a rock by the river which runs through the center of town. I asked if he’s from here. “Denver,” he replied. Good enough. I’d later find out that he’s actually a Dallas native. Apparently Texas has its hooks in me.
Pete opened the conversation saying he was up from Denver, staying in a friend’s house, a way to get away from the city while he was going through some stuff. He seemed to teeter for a moment, on the edge of an emotion. I rearranged the questions, hoping they might be more palatable with a lead in on what makes a good life.
“To me faith is very important, being involved in a community of believers. And more than that, making sure that I’m actually living differently than I would be if I weren’t a believer. It’s really important to have sense of purpose in life generally. For example, I work in finance right now and it’s easy to get jaded there. The way I can feel good still is by trying to help as many people as I can not have to worry about money.
And then people are very important. The stuff I was going though, I’ll let you in, it was a divorce. My wife cheated on me. Good friends and my community of people were all that got me through that.”
He paused for a moment and we sat as he collected himself. Visibly compartmentalizing, he continued,
“All that and being able to do the things I love. Hiking, biking, hunting. Little joys that make like better for you just for that moment. Those are really important too.”
Pete went on to share in our short conversation a sense of self that was beautifully positioned on the good that you can do in the world. I got the sense that his worldview came into clarity in response to the pain inflicted on him by another. His views on personal status were much less based in the consensus of others but on the kindness and surety that people radiated outward into the world. In many ways it felt like his responses were talismans for himself to live up to. Very much in line with the idea of faith requiring one to live differently than if one didn’t have faith. He described the values he found honorable with clear aspiration to self-sufficiently embody those values too.
“I respect most when people treat others well. Not assuming that you know better. I struggle with that a lot too. Being willing to change your mind in response to someone else’s experience. The same for people in power. I respect it most when people with wealth or power or status don’t use it to lord over others or to enrich or further help themselves. I respect it when they use that power to help others as much as possible.”
I asked about dignity from the perspective of what has to be taken for a person to lose their dignity. He sat with the question a moment as we listened to the gentle roll of the river and chuckled watching kids play on the rocks across the way.
“I think you can’t take someone’s dignity. It’s something that as an individual, you own for yourself. You’ll hear how people in prison, even with their limitations, they conduct themselves as they know they want to. Or for example, I was speaking to a homeless man in Dallas a while back and he showed me how he kept his area clean and well maintained. He woke up other homeless people in the area when day came around and checked if they were okay. He cared for himself and his community, even with the limitations in his life.
Dignity for me is a sense of self worth, a sense that every person is fully a person, not garbage to be thrown away. And that extends to yourself too. If you have that and you treat yourself and others according to that truth, you can’t have your dignity taken.”
We closed with the question of what he wanted now in life, or what he felt was missing. He smiled a sardonic smile.
“Security in a romantic relationship. I’m missing that for sure. I had an idea that no matter what, we won’t leave each other. That was what our vows meant. And there are people who think, till-death-do-us-part is a sort of free pass to do whatever you want without consequences. But I felt it had more responsibility, to respect one another. Because that bond actually means you have a unique capacity to hurt the other person. That carries a lot, and it means you have to truly try to be the best version of yourself for that other person. I miss having that on both sides. I thought it could never happen.”
I sat with this as incapable of imagining it as he was. I’m a year away from my own wedding. I didn’t have any way to patch this for him, even in a field-medic, here’s-a-bandaid type of way. Instead we gave it the silence it deserved like a moment of mourning and moved on to shoot the breeze conversation about hiking before heading on our own ways.
