Relationships are important. And not just the romantic ones. We often forget about the importance of friendship in our busy lives, and we often don’t remember that they need to be cultivated and cared for just like anything else in our lives. But, sometimes, no matter what you do certain friends aren’t life-lasting.
Entering college, I knew I wouldn’t remain friends with everyone from high school. I didn’t want to. A lot of friendships are developed simply because you see someone daily, and that’s perfectly okay. Yeah, I might have known some of these people for half my life, but I didn’t really know them. It sounds callous, but I didn’t really care. And neither did they. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone that you meet.
When we enter college, we promise friends that we’ll be friends forever. You’ll still text all the time and visit each other whenever you’re home. Months pass and the messages get fewer apart and even shorter and soon there’s not really a friendship there anymore.
It’s OK.
Friendships exist because you connect over something. It’s as simple as liking the same TV show or hating the same professor. It might be more profound. Bonding through shared life experiences usually connects you to someone for a while. But people are always changing, and you might not get along with someone you used to connect with.
My best friend and I have known each other since kindergarten. I’ve known her almost as long as I’ve known my own sister. Jordan and I became best friends then, cemented our friendship in sixth grade, and have been best friends since. We’ve survived movings, divorces, high school, and never getting to see each other in person. Our interests are just similar enough to bond over, but because we actually care about each other and our friendship, we can talk about anything and still get along, even to this day. We’ve gone through bad emo phases, worse independent teenage phases, and terrible weeaboo phases -- and, somehow, we still are friends.
The key to a good friend isn’t that you stay friends for a long time. It’s that your friendship is malleable enough to survive any changes.
That’s why so many of those friendship from childhood, from work, from class don’t last. They’re not malleable. We have to accept the fact that we’re going to change. Our interests and our goals and our wants aren’t going to ever be completely consistent throughout our lives. When you’re in your twenties, you don’t need a lifetime friend to be from your childhood. You’re lucky if you are, but there are so many people you have yet to meet.
Jordan and I aren’t the same people we were at the start of college. We’re not the same people we were in high school. We’re definitely not the same people we were in kindergarten. None of that means that we shouldn’t be friends. It just means we might have to put in some extra effort, just like with anything else.
