Friendship is great, but for a long time I never subscribed to the concept of best friends. How can you have more than one of something and have all of them be the best? That kind of defeats the purpose of a superlative. Whenever someone asked why I didn’t believe in best friends, I would use that as my initial reasoning, but it went much deeper than that.
High school was a weird time for everyone. Half of my high school was filled with people from another middle school, and following my peak I felt like I was playing catch up. For the sake of personal solidarity, I decided to not force myself to cling to a group. Instead, I found a couple clusters of good people who were all interested in different things so they almost never overlapped. It was kind of like the John Tucker Must Die of friendship. I found that this method made it easier for me to keep people at a healthy distance, and it kept people from knowing too much about me. I don’t even know why I did that, because there wasn’t anything all that interesting going on in my life.
I feel like I should clarify here. I loved my friends in high school, so don’t get me wrong. Some of my fondest memories are with them: whether we were cramped into a corner booth at IHOP following one of our home football games or throwing a rager after our senior prom, we were having a great time. They were always there for me, but now that I look back I don’t think they would have been able to say the same about me. Sure, I was physically present, but that wasn’t enough, and it affected our relationships to a certain extent. It was a road block to the apex of friendship that I saw in other people’s relationships, even the relationships my friends had with other less emotionally closed-off people. It didn’t even occur to me how much I had been missing out until we all went off to college.
College is another weird time for everyone. Well, in the beginning is at least. People are scrambling to find someone, anyone, to sit with in the dining hall or talk to in class. I watched these people and laughed at how fettered they were by needing friends. C.S. Lewis says it best in his book The Four Loves (which I highly recommend). In his chapter on Friendship – he capitalizes certain terms to distinguish them from more general usages – Lewis explains that Friendship is more than just Companionship, which is between people with a shared interest or hobby. Rather, Friendship is more inward, something “less widely shared and less easily defined.” Thus, those ”pathetic people” (his words, not mine) who just want friends for the sake of having friends usually can’t make them. He goes on to say that in Friendship, we find the “truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth?”
In case you’re wondering, no, I hadn’t had my Eureka moment yet. Don’t hold your breath because it didn’t happen for quite a while after. But, once all my high school friends and I had gone our separate ways, I noticed a substantial decrease in the amount of people I kept in touch with. I expected this. I call this trimming the fat: you cut off the fatty bits until you get to the meat. During this process, my relationships with the friends who had made the cut strengthened. The best part was that it happened naturally. I felt rather content with the current status of my friendships, and didn’t think there was any more growing we could do. Spoiler alert: I was wrong.
Even with all the great people I had met up to that point in college and my meaty friendships at home, I was still keeping people at a considerable distance, and it would have been fine if it weren’t for life’s proverbial curveballs. I found out pretty quickly that life can be tough, and it’s even tougher when you’re going through it alone. I spent most of my sophomore year borderline depressed due to a plethora of unexpected curveballs – ranging from a failed relationship to a week in the hospital – and decided enough was enough. I had to get over myself, check my pride, suck it up and let someone get close to me.
For most people this is an easy task, but I was in way over my head. Everyone else had spent their entire lives making deep, meaningful relationships, while I’ve only glossed over the handful I had. I decided to start with my high school friendships. It’s funny how arduous a task can seem when you’re approaching it, but then, when you finally have the courage to face it head-on, it suddenly becomes so simple. I found that my friends who had always been there for me were still there. They never left. They never held my emotional incompetence against me. Once I saw how much I needed them, how much they meant to me and how important they were to me, I couldn’t imagine my life without them. Lewis claimed that Friendship is the least biological out of the Four Loves. It has no survival value; rather, it gives value to survival.
I have done quite a bit of reflection on the development of my friendships since then, and I can confidently say that I’m happy with the relationships I have. Sure, my life continues to throw curveballs, but I’ve found that surrounding yourself with your best friends can easily turn those pesky pitches into RBIs.