Your Best Friend
All of your life, you have been convinced to surround yourself with the greatest of friends that will push you to be the best version of yourself. Find meaningful friendships with people who look out for you and challenge you. An idea that promotes friendships that put OTHER people in a position to control your happiness, actions, limits, etc. By giving this power to other people, we automatically are crippling our ability to individually thrive and succeed. One very important distinction that
separates homo sapiens from other species is our ability to use social relationships and networks as a unique tool for survival. We were created to be social beings that form meaningful relationships with those around us. Relationships that help us feel whole. I do think that social relationships are VERY important for a healthy life.
But, as I see it, our society has created this stigma of your real, true friends "knowing what is best for you and only wanting the best for you". This may very well be the idea, but I do not think it is the reality. Here is why:
I was talking around and getting different opinions from my co-workers, I asked them two simple questions.
1) What is your perception of society's definition of a friend?
2) Why?
Some answers I got from one co-worker for the first question were things like "people judge you off of their expectations", and "the feelings you get from your friends either validate your decisions or make you feel bad about them".
My second coworker said things like "Societies version of friendship is distorted", and "I think it is the standard for people to look for affirmation and approval and that tends to lead to hidden agendas and sugar coated friendships."
The answers I received for the second question were interesting. I got very consistent answers as to WHY they had this opinion. The first co-worker I asked said, "we don't let our kids find their feelings, we tell them to go find friends, and that prevents us from seeking out our OWN aspirations, we seek to please others."
The second co-worker I asked said, "people start with good intentions that eventually lead to high expectations set by societies idea of friendship. This is what hurts people because we are all broken in some way, and these expectations end up hurting us."
This mini experiment for me was very eye opening. It made me realize that we ARE all broken in some way or another. In turn, understanding WHY we gravitate towards certain people or crowds is what we need to focus on.
Why do we enjoy people with the same twisted humor that we have? Why do we cling to friends that have similar personalities as we do?
The bottom line is that we seek to fill our "identity" with meaning. We strive to belong. We are motivated by the simple feeling of belonging to something, whether that be a friend group, a club, a significant other, etc. This feeling of "belonging" is important to us as humans. It has social capital. Ultimately, it is the ties between people that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Human beings assemble themselves and form communities that in turn give them a sense of belonging. With the comfort that comes with social relationships, we cling to that comfort as something that is essential for survival. And with scientific proof backing this up, we as a human race have cemented the idea that these social relationships will be what keeps us "on our toes" or "out of trouble". While this definitely CAN be true, I believe it to be a little poisonous and personally paralyzing for self growth and understanding.
Of course, we naturally gravitate towards people with the same beliefs as us and become adaptive to the behaviors and personalities of the crowds we hang around. We do this to make sense of how we feel or to validate our ideas of "normalcy". This is called emotional contagion. As humans we have the ability to feed off of each others emotions, and sometimes even adopting behaviors or opinions that weren't once native to us.
This is what does not make much sense, and is somewhat troubling to me.
Here's my theory:
Why can't we be taught the important personal lessons that come with doing those things for ourselves? Learning to be your own best friend. Learning about your behaviors, understanding your faults, and owning your weaknesses before seeking approval or belonging. Of course, a child will not understand that they should do this before forming friendships because kids form friendships with most anything. We as parents, providers, relatives, and friends need to foster a foundation where these kids can maintain personal friendships, while also being true to themselves in order to understand what kind of friendships are healthy for them.
I am in no way saying that friendships are unhealthy, and that we should not have or promote them. What I am saying, is that we need to promote the idea of people being their own best friend, and this starts with children. Promote that they are the one friend that won't give up on themselves. The one friend that is always there to listen. The one friend that acknowledges their deepest fears and helps foster a healthy way to address and solve them.
The only friend that knows you better than anybody in this small world with billions of people- Yourself. It is so important that you are your best friend, biggest supporter, and hold yourself accountable for your life decisions and happiness.
After all, we are brought into this world alone. We live our personal lives and all the baggage it comes with, (depression, anxiety, personality faults, unhealthy coping methods, etc.) ALONE. And consequently we all die, alone. Might as well help yourself live your best life before it's over. Love yourself.