Hank: Good morning, John. I've been thinking a little bit about why it is not - like, it's not necessarily physically difficult but not natural for me to say, "I love you", to my brother. It just - it - the thing that it is - it feels to me even after all these years of Esther days. Like those words belong somewhere else. We all know, I assume, that we're constantly swimming around in the water of culture without ever seeing it or recognizing it or understanding all of its implications on us.

This is definitely one. It's - it's where the water becomes visible. It's like, just say this thing that's definitely true and that you definitely feel just say it.

And I'm like, "okay", but I just - I won't though. You show your brother that you love him. You - you're there when things are hard.

You help him move. You drive to pick him up at the airport. You -like the language part, we don't need that.

We're just - we just act. We act with love. We don't say with love.

They banter instead. They - they say mean things to each other in nice ways. That - that's love.

You have to take the love and put it inside of a spiky package and then throw it at their head. I don't like to imagine this as, like, a dysfunction. It's not a dysfunction of me.

It's just like the construction of society. Society is definitely kind of down for emotional expression between men now in some contexts. So like mourning, grieving, fatherhood, I think? But day-to-day like finishing a phone conversation with "I love you" is still like a little bit culturally trans-gressive.

Dads and daughters, "I love you." Dads and sons, "I love you." That it didn't used to be, but now it is.

Sisters, definitely "I love you." Brothers, not so much. There's definitely a thing that this is a symptom of and that thing isn't that great.

I don't necessarily think that you need me to tell you that I love you. Maybe you do. I don't think that I need you to tell me that you love me.

I know that you do, but there's definitely two important things to doing it. One is I think the thing that is it is a symptom of is probably not great. This symptom in itself I don't think is that bad, but the thing that it is a symptom of, which I can't really put my finger on, I probably think that it needs to be sort of worked at a little bit.

It's a - It's a knot in culture that needs to be massaged. But then second, actually, yeah, like actually, yeah, I do need you to know that I love you. And like, that, it doesn't matter what we do together.

It doesn't matter if you're feeling good. It doesn't matter if you like my idea or don't like my idea. I love you cuz you're my brother and I'm always going to love you.

Right? I think that - that like saying it in a way that makes it clear that it isn't conditional is important. Like my first instinct for this video was to be like, "Wow, look at the crazy thing that we can do on vlogbrothers. We can absolutely without hesitation make two videos that we know are not going to do well, but that we think are important, that we would 100% make that video instead of one that we know is going to get a bunch of views because we're doing something different here.

And isn't that cool that we're two brothers doing something different?" That's not why I love you. It's not conditional on us like having a cool project together.

Today is Esther Day. It's Esther's birthday. It's an annual celebration of the life of Esther Earl, who when asked how she would like to have her life celebrated on her birthday every year, she said, "a celebration of love not between like romantic partners, but a celebration of platonic love."

And you can be a part of the 15th annual Esther Day celebration today starting at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, 1:00 p.m. Mountain.

Nobody ever says "Mountain Time", but I do. I do for my people. Folks are celebrating love and friendship and community at the Esther Day virtual party.

John, you will be there. There is a link in the description and I will see you on Tuesday.