Cherish the Day

Brandon

There is a quiet clarity in the way Brandon talks about becoming himself. Not as a single transformation, but as a sequence: learning, knowing, loving, arriving. His answers move between self-awareness, humor, discomfort, survival, and the kind of perspective that comes from paying attention to what life teaches you.

What side of yourself did you have to grow into?

“My attention to detail — especially when it comes to the things happening around me.

I had to grow into being uncomfortable. That was a learning process for me: understanding that I was going to be forced into uncomfortable spaces, and learning how to move through them.”

What does it mean to feel at home in yourself?

“I feel like, in my life, I went through the journey of actually being a kid and then becoming an adult.

Learning yourself. Knowing yourself. And then loving yourself.

I feel like when I was 27, I started learning myself. Around 30, I started to know myself. At 32, I started loving myself.

And now, I feel like I’m home in myself.

I know who I am. I’m comfortable with who I am because I love who I am.”

What would you say to yourself at 21?

“If you have to think about it twice, probably don’t do it.

And I would also say: save that money. Take that trip. Wherever it was.

Yeah. Do it.”

What would you say to yourself 10 years from now?

“I would probably thank myself for still being alive.

Hopefully I’m in some kind of good form, and I would thank myself for treating myself well enough to still be alive at 45.”

When people meet you, what do you hope they understand about you beyond what they can see?

“Why I’m funny.

I’m told that I’m funny, and there’s a method behind it. There’s a reason I chose laughter as my coping mechanism.”

I asked him what the method was.

His answer was simple:

“‘Cherish the Day’ by Sade.

Cherish the day. Simple.

That’s it.”

What Stayed With Me

What stayed with me wasn’t only that Brandon said he had learned to love himself. It was the timeline he gave it.

At 27, learning himself.

At 30, knowing himself.

At 32, loving himself.

There was something striking about hearing self-love described not as a revelation, but as a process with stages.

I also love the way Brandon allows life itself to be one of his teachers. There is so much available to learn from simply living, but awareness matters. Experience can pass right through us if we aren’t paying enough attention to recognize what it is trying to show us.

Brandon pays attention.

He is one of the most open-minded people I know. Like all of us, he has his limitations, but I’ve watched him remain willing to listen, consider something outside of what he already believes, and allow his perspective to expand — even when he ultimately disagrees. What I respect most is that disagreement rarely requires him to abandon respect for the people involved.

I saw that same kind of openness during the photoshoot.

This was Brandon’s first photoshoot ever. We started simply: seated on a stool, something closer to a traditional portrait or professional headshot. A few minutes in, he told me it felt unnatural.

So I asked him what would make him comfortable.

He said he’d feel more comfortable smoking his blunt.

Then he asked if he could smoke during the shoot.

I told him yes. If that was what would help him feel more like himself, we could work with that and make photographs from there.

The shift was immediate.

He went to grab it, came back, and the shoot began to feel less like Brandon trying to fit into a photoshoot and more like the photoshoot adapting to Brandon.

That mattered to me, especially because it was his first time doing this.

I could have continued directing him through poses and asking him to accommodate the structure I had imagined. Instead, I wanted to see where the session would take us once he felt comfortable enough to participate as himself.

From there, we enjoyed the process.

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And I think that is part of what stewardship means to me in a creative room. Direction still matters. Intention still matters. But so does paying attention to the person in front of you.

Sometimes preserving the integrity of a shoot means knowing when to guide. Sometimes it means knowing when to make room.

That choice allowed the photographs to remain connected to Brandon rather than becoming a version of him that only worked for the camera.

Maybe that is part of what he meant when he talked about learning how to move through uncomfortable spaces. Not necessarily becoming comfortable with everything, but becoming capable of recognizing what he needs inside those spaces — and being willing to say it.

Then, at the end of our conversation, I asked him why he chose laughter as his coping mechanism.

His answer was simple:

“Cherish the day.”

And suddenly, much of what came before it felt connected.

Moving through discomfort. Taking the trip. Treating himself well enough to still be alive ten years from now. Learning himself, knowing himself, loving himself. Allowing life to keep teaching him.

None of it sounded like a demand to make every day extraordinary.

It sounded more like a decision to stay awake enough to receive what the day has to offer.

And maybe that is part of what feeling at home in yourself eventually gives you: not certainty that life will be comfortable, but enough openness to continue learning from it — and enough love for yourself to keep meeting it anyway.