Best of Friends—what does that mean?
We often hear someone tell us that so-and-so is one of their best friends. Ok, we accept that. Sometimes a person will tell us that so-and-so has been one of their best friends since youth. That statement becomes a little more tricky. It seems best friends change with age, with distance, with changing times and personalities. We really don’t like to drop the ‘best friend’ tag unless there has been some sort of personal and angry fallout. It seems disloyal to drop the term ‘best friend’ just because they live a long way away, or we live different lives and seldom see each other except for brief reunions few and far between. To do so seems disrespectful.
In some respects though, it seems a tad silly to refer to someone as a best friend if there is little interaction and most likely will never be much interaction anymore except maybe at a funeral. Sometimes I play a mischievous game when someone tells me some friend in youth is still their best friend. “Oh, you still hang out together a lot?” “No, I haven’t seen him/her in years, but we are still very close” “What current aspects of your life or his/her life do you talk a lot about?” “Well I don’t mean it that way. If I have a current problem I would not want to bother him/her, they are too far away to get meaningfully involved. But when I do see him/her I might tell them about the problem after the fact”. “Under what circumstances in your current life would you call them right away and get them involved? “Why would I impose a current problem on them? That would not be appropriate.” “Well, why is he/she still a best friend if you don’t involve them in your current life?” “Well because that isn’t right, we live our own lives now.” So it is like an honorary degree, just a title given out of respect?” “What are you driving at? Can’t you just accept they are one of my best friends?” “Ok, you are right to be annoyed, I just don’t always know what that term really means.”
Of course I am being picky, picky, picky here, but in reality I think we have different best friends with every stage of our life. Of course there can be exceptions and some people remain tight and very involved with each other’s daily life till death do they part. Most of the time that means a spouse, a boss, a friend with where you both live in the same place still. Today, people move around a lot, and in a practical sense they are going to have different ‘best friends’ in different places. It is all semantics.
I grew up with a tight network of close friends who could not have been better ‘best friends’ to one who was hardly of a common personality. While hardly aloof with them, I was with most others. In school I was not active in anything—just observed, observed, and then observed more. I am still a incessant observer of people, and people watching is one of my biggest hobbies, in addition to often writing about my observations on most anything. I was never much of a leader in anything when young for varied and good reasons. For one thing I was never mainstream in most anything, and too insecure to attempt any control over others. I stayed that way through college and then metamorphosed into some kind of leader and organizer for varied pursuits. Perhaps I just loved a contest, but at least the contests were invariably for good causes involving good people and justice for them. I never found much need to battle for personal gain involving money or titles or power. Enough of that sort of fell into my lap. I always seemed to know when ‘enough was enough’ and focused on other kinds of battles. Of course once one becomes a lightning rod for action one becomes a genuine risk at the highest administrative levels, where tradition and languid tranquility are required for survival. It often is a personal choice whether one wants tranquility or justice and progress.
If I digressed briefly above, it is as a way of explaining why I conclude our ‘best friends’ change from time to time, place to place, contest to contest. If we ‘sign on’ to battling causes, and are willing to stir up the nest for these causes, whether they be for a group or an individual, we end up standing out, and lose the comfort of pleasant enough neutrality. Thus we end up with an abundance of ‘best friends’ for the battles and strong enemies on the other side. When one battle is over and a new battle begins, our best friends change again, as do our strong enemies. I learned early in my career that any serious challenge for change or justice or improvement in an existing system leaves one vulnerable for personal attack. At first I got in over my head and was only saved from destruction by some very kind and good people who came to my rescue from all walks of life and personal station in life. BUT—I also learned never again to place others in a position like that since, when the dust settles, I may not be able to save them from the retribution they received for supporting me. It remains one of the biggest regrets in my life that so many people paid a price for supporting me. There were many endless battles for good causes that ensued but never were those unable to protect themselves put in harm’s way by me. If we are going to fight some tough and difficult battles for issues, or justice for groups or individuals, we need to have strong reserve support from those powerful enough to protect us without themselves being subject to retribution. Never go into battle until there are those high enough on the ladder, and secure enough in their position, who will likely protect us, if the need arises. If we cannot protect ourselves when we mount a campaign for any kind of justice anywhere, we cannot, in good conscience, leave the most vulnerable in line to pay a sacrifice from which they often cannot recover.
At any rate, ‘best friends’ for some people like myself are going to vary from place to place, time to time, issue to issue. What is the point of trying to maintain close friendship when time and place and change take place? It simply can’t be done, and any attempt to keep such friendships strong will fail. When I meet with those who were once so large a part of my small world it is like entering a whole strange environment. One on one it is much better since at least one gets a chance to delve into their mindset and life situation in a realistic way. In a group it is almost always each person projecting an image they wish to project plus endless humorous witticisms. That sort of thing is fine——for about several hours then it wears thin, but can’t be stopped. It is almost depressing to meet with them years later and have so little to talk about in common except memories and inane chit chat about people and activities which are no longer relevant to any of us. The plus is, and it is a huge plus, that when we retire from all the good cause battles, there are many once ‘best friends’ who gave us a ton of good memories to sustain us in a cheerful mood during our terminational years. Those wonderful memories about so many good people, all different but good, are the stepping stones to contentment in our later years. There are a ton of good people out there in life, and the more you meet them, work with them, and help them, the more good memories go into your memory bank to support your faith in this whole thing called life until we meet our end. Those who enter their terminational years with only money, things, and titles to remember, find these things by themselves lead nowhere except an addiction for more. When enough is never enough, contentment can never be reached.
Like most topics, little is set in stone. There are many people who don’t have a lot of ‘best friends’ in life, and do retain a, or a few, best friend(s) throughout life. Sometimes it might just be a spouse or their kids or their parents etc. There always seems to be something unsettling about families who never generate very many close relationships with anyone outside their own nuclear family. It doesn’t seem natural to have never really left the nest. And we should never forget pets. They really usually do remain our best friends for life. The trouble is, their life is almost always shorter than ours. That’s ok too, at least we were able to ensure our pet had a best friend for life. Most of us need a cabal of best friends, that come and go through a revolving door. Change and diversity are always the engine which drive evolution and our own lives. Time seems the only constant.
P.S. Some of my childhood friends still manage to find genuine pleasure in reunions 50-60 years later even though little of their lives today do they have in common. They can reunionite for 5-7 days and find delight in all of it. It doesn’t work so much for me—I once knew them like a book, but not anymore— too much time and distance has taken place and I feel like I would need to start all over again to know them well now, and they likewise only know the me of yesteryears—many yesteryears. I still try to relate to them like we were still teenagers but that only goes so far. Still, there is something to be admired and rare occurring with their reunions. And that’s ok, none of us need to win every jack-pot in life. My perception is simple, like most everything in the terminational years—let those in their formative and productive years win the jackpots, I have won enough of them and prefer now to just go gently down the stream in a peaceful contemplative mode of life.
