When I was younger, my closest friendships were fashioned out of convenience rather than motivated by some deep, cosmic alliance or unforsaken love. My two best friends were my next-door neighbors and my mom’s best friend’s daughters, from a mere few blocks down our neighborhood street, Candyland Path or the Yellow Brick Road, depending on the day. These friendships, designed on the proximity of our homes or how frequently our moms spent time together, made them relatively trivial.
They were plainly the two most finite pairings that one could envisage. I certainly never needed to unravel the souls of these friends and all their patched wounds to be appointed to best friend status. In fact, there was not even an inevitable, deeply-rooted trauma spiel—there was only play. Shovel fiercely until you crack dinosaur fossils and the earth’s backbone, until you’ve regretfully exhausted all your monster truck fantasies, until you can no longer decipher between fight and fun. There was no need for any depth, because our fused imaginations gave that friendship all it ever needed.
Yet, as children flower and spread those angel wings, the unvarnished truth arises that much more is necessary to build true friendships. On the other side of childhood, we must delve beneath all the impenetrable layers, all the heart’s hidden pain, to unlock our friends’ raw and unfiltered essence: the best kind. It’s nice to be warm, to leave a note on their dashboard or freshly blossomed buttercups at their door. It is through genuine care and a warm assurance in trust that you will, again, come by that best friend label, though in a version that feels purely organic, and infinitely more meaningful and powerful in its impact. They no longer exist primarily for our entertainment or flutter into your life as would a fairy to distract and delight you—with friendship now comes the richest form of love and loyalty.
We ought to take heed, recognize that each of our delicate beings is a treasure, that love is satiable and inestimably precious, and treat ourselves as emphatically worthy of this life. That is what will get you there, best friend. Yet, there is something to be said about fate. Maybe that elusive friend is not waiting impatiently in the abyss, but frolicking happily in another life, unbothered by when they might come to you. When that soul emerges, hand outstretched, lightness from the dusk, be ready for the rare beauty that friendship brings to your heart and to your mind.