Andrew D

Commercial Music (‘06)

What has your experience been like after leaving BYU?

Since leaving BYU, I’ve focused on building multiple businesses that I own. I’ve become a scrappy little entrepreneur. Gotten married, going on ten years this year. No kids yet, but in the plans. And mostly, I’m just really focused on becoming my own person, finding what’s meaningful to me, and being okay with that. I think I’ve really enjoyed my life since BYU.

I think when I was at BYU, I operated within a very typical BYU-esque construct. Meaning that I had a framework that I used to define life and define what was right and wrong and what was worthy and unworthy and good and bad, and that’s all I knew. That framework wasn’t good or bad. It was very limited because all frameworks are limited. But I probably have spent most of my adult life deconstructing all frameworks that I used to live by and understanding that they’re just frameworks. What I thought was the right way to define my actions, to define what was meaningful, it was just that.

I would be called being gay one of the best things that happened to me spiritually. Because without it, I don’t know if I ever would have questioned a lot of the constructs that I used to bind myself by. I grew up believing that there was a certain way that love should look and that there was a hierarchy of love. That you’ve got friends, strangers, family, then at the pinnacle of the hierarchy is a man and a woman married in the Mormon temple. And that’s the utmost, righteous version of love.

And, being gay, it forced me to challenge all of that. I remember the first night I spent a night with a boy. We just cuddled and that was it. I never even kissed anybody. I was twenty-two years old and we had been hanging out and we just fell asleep and we snuggled all night. And I remember waking up the next morning, and I felt like my soul had been let out of this cage that I didn’t even know it had been in. Because I lived my whole life in this little box. And suddenly I realized that some kind of connection was meaningful to me that I didn’t understand could be meaningful.

So, when you ask, “what was it like at BYU,” I expected meaning to come in certain formats, and I didn’t know that formats outside of those expectations existed. So, it’s been really fun as an adult to explore all kinds of ways of expressing and receiving love that are out of that hierarchy of the only thing I thought was real.

What does your spirituality look like today?

When I was at BYU, I thought there was a right and a wrong way of doing things, and that I had discovered the right way and that I should align myself with people who would help enforce that right way with other people.

My spirituality now is probably the exact opposite of that. I don’t think things are inherently good or bad, or right and wrong. I don’t think that anything is inherently meaningful. I think that things have meaning assigned to it. I don’t think that any form of love is better than any other form of love. If there’s a better form of love, it’s only better for you because you assigned that meaning to it.

So, my spirituality right now is very open. I would consider myself a very spiritual person. To me, the ultimate spirituality is knowing that growth and evolution is part of our existence. I would call it the core of our existence, a function of our existence. I don’t see my existence through the same paradigm that I used to. I used to believe in a very linear path. I existed somewhere spiritually, then I was born. I’m here to prove myself worthy to an arbitrary being who denies or grants blessings at will. And hopefully, I’ll do my best, and someone will help me make up my shortcomings, and then I’ll be judged. And then I’ll go somewhere and I’ll end up in that somewhere forever.

When I was at BYU, I was really looking for what would make me happy. And it was conflicting for me because I had this long checklist of things to do that were my definition of happiness, and I was really good at checking those things off. You go to school, you go to seminary, you graduate from seminary, you get your Eagle Scout, make your mom proud because you can give worthy priesthood blessings, get into this school, serve as a home teacher, be the bishop’s favorite. I was really good at all of my checklists, and I get that some of those things are mandatory and some of them are not mandatory. I got pretty far down that checklist, and none of that is the actual definition of happiness though. Where I found my happiness was being able to stop looking at the outside world for permission and to be able to go within me and say not “what’s wrong with me and how do I fix it,” “why do I have an empty void in my life and who can fill it.” Instead, I’m whole, and you’re whole, and the best parts of my journey since school hasn’t been undoing anything that I’ve learned at BYU or un-restricting myself. I don’t harbor any resentment; I love my education. I had so much fun at school. That being said, I recognize that it was just a great pivot point for me to be able to see the contrast between an environment where the standard seems to be looking at others for permission to be who you really are and to flourish and shine as a human being versus looking within and looking to you and your own source and your own higher power and just saying it’s enough that I am, and it’s enough that I’m here, and it’s enough that I contribute. I think that my true power, and my true happiness, is in the present moment. There’s a saying from Tao Te Ching that says, “The present moment is eternal because it renews itself endlessly.” And I remember as a missionary and a BYU student, I remember hearing the word “eternity” all the time because all of my fellow student mates would be getting married and they would all get up in front of the pulpit and they would say, “I’m so excited to begin my eternal journey with my spouse.” And I would say, “That makes no sense because eternity doesn’t have a beginning or an end.” Then, when I learned this saying from the Tao Te Ching, it just resonated with me so deeply. That this moment is continually renewing itself, so why am I looking toward some distant future for when I will finally arrive at the destination of meaning. That can’t be because then what is the meaning of this moment. That’s where I’d say where my spirituality is. How do I choose my focus in this moment and place it on things that are beautiful to me? And energizing? And exciting? And loving? How do I find where energy is flowing in my life? How do I identify places where I want to be and are meaningful to me? And how do I be okay with the fact that something sings to me? Something’s resonating with me right now? I don’t need to look to outside sources for permission for what I want or to want what I want or for validation that it’s an okay thing to want. If something is valuable to me right now, it’s valuable to me right now.

I like to give people the analogy of favorite colors. So often in life we try to convince people that a certain thing should be meaningful to them. Like me saying to you, “What’s your favorite color?” And you saying, “Green.” And I’d say, “Actually, it’s not. It’s actually blue. And let me tell you why.” Which, you laugh at because it makes no sense because if green is meaningful to you, green is meaningful to you. Who am I to tell you what should be meaningful to you? That’s ridiculous. The privilege to me, as the other person in the room with you, is to be able to say, “I see. I see you. And I see that that is important to you. And that that lights you up. And I honor your journey. And I honor that for whatever reason you’re here and you’re going where you’re going.” That’s what it is.

What is a piece of advice you’d give to current queer BYU students?

Stop giving your power away. I think we give our power away to so many things. We give our power away to the string of letters that we use to define ourselves, and which drives me crazy because we are looking for more and more ways to compartmentalize ourselves instead of realizing that you’re a human being, you are of worth, you are beautiful, you are of value, you don’t need a label for your skin color or your sexuality or your religion or your non-religion or whatever to define you because none of that could possibly define you. It doesn’t matter who’s in office at the White House, who’s running this church, or who’s holding picket signs against that church. None of that has anything to do with you and who you are and what your worth is and your power to create your own reality. That would be my advice.

Answers to the questions are transcribed from Andrews’s video interview and lightly edited for clarity. The transcription does not cover the entire video.

Posted October 2021