As you grow up and continue to meet new people or move new places, many close friendships from the past tend to fade away or come to an extreme halt. Well, that’s never really been the case for me. I am actually one of those people that’s great at keeping in touch with those that I find important and worthy of my time and attention. I mean sure, of course there are times that I am really busy and don’t keep in as great of touch as I should, but I always check back in at some point. Because when you think about it, you meet thousands of people in your lifetime yet only a few actually leave an impression on you; and that’s something worth holding onto, right?
Well, this philosophy of not letting go of friendships has actually caused me to confuse many people with the many stories I tell. You will often here me refer to someone as “one of my best friends,” “my best friend from home,” “my best friend from studying abroad,” “my best friend from college,” “my best OL friend,” “my best camp friend,” or “my best work friend.” You may pick up on where a slight mix up may occur. I call a lot of people my best friends and sometimes people think it’s weird because they expect “best” to be referring to one person. But, why would I limit myself on the number of people that I am close to? Life is all about the relationships you form with other people, so obviously, I am going to fight to maintain them! And having multiple best friends from the various periods of my life does not downgrade how close I am or how much I love any of those people. Because thanks to our modern technology, it is not hard for me to keep in touch with all those “best friends” that I have around the world.
In fact, the Internet can even aid in strengthening new friendships. For instance, back in high school, I attended a leadership conference for a weekend (yes, I was one of those very involved types) where I made many fun new friends. Obviously we all added each other on Myspace so that we could stay in contact after the conference. And no I am not going to claim that I have stayed friends with all of them, but I did become extremely close to a girl that I will always consider one of my best friends. We kept in touch through texting, Myspace, Facebook, and A LOT of AIM chatting. While we may have lived about 2 hours apart and only met for 3 days, we knew everything about each other’s lives and would switch off visiting each other in our hometowns every few months. This is a perfect example of how important it is to make an effort with people that you make a connection with, no matter how brief it can be. Best friends pop up in unexpected places and ways all the time, you just have to be open these opportunities.
Truthfully, you never know what people will end up being the ones you call your best friend. When you look back on life and first impression, some people can really prove that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. And, you should never think that you can’t have more than one best friend in your life, because that is just ridiculous! As Mindy Kaling so beautifully put it on her hilarious show, The Mindy Project, “best friend isn’t a person, it’s a tier.” And I am proud to say that I have a rather large tier of best friends ranging from people I have known since preschool to people I have just really gotten to know in the past year. I will never let the fact that I don’t live in the same city as someone or that we haven’t talked for a little bit take a person off my tier. I know that everyone has moments of wondering where all their friends have gone and feeling lonely, but I guarantee that if you pick up your phone and call someone that has been on your best friend tier before, they will be happy to hear from you. Because if you’ve cared about a person enough to call them a best friend at some point in your life, you will always have a spot in your heart for them.
So ultimately, no, you cannot have too many best friends. I know that the number of people that I refer to as my “best friend” will only continue to grow and I would never want to change that…well, that is until I will have to pick bridesmaids. That’s gonna be brutal.
