Besties

by John Bishop, Director of Spiritual Formation

What makes someone your bestie? Common interests? Similar outlooks on life? Your families have been friends your whole lives? Trust? Or maybe it’s something less innocent like peer pressure, proximity, or guilt. There are a lot of complicated reasons why we choose to spend time with people; why we might throw around a term like Bestie. 

 

Relationships are central to most everything we do and think about. From the moment we’re born and look up to our parents, and every day after, our lives are filled with relationships. We are bound to each other, for better or worse. Because of this it is important to formulate our beliefs about relationships. So how do we think about what we want from others and what do we think about our responsibility to others? And where do we turn to formulate these beliefs? 

 

I think most of us would say that what we want from our bestie is to be acknowledged. To be seen, known, understood, loved, accepted, treated justly and kindly etc. But, often, even with our best friends, this is not always the case. You get (or at least feel) rejected. You must navigate complicated situations where being associated with one person gets you in trouble with another. Loyalties shift, interests wane, tensions arise, people change. This catches us off guard because it’s not what’s presented on social media feeds, movies, and music. Even though the closing scene of Grease shows Sandy and Danny riding into the sunset like everything is going to work out, we all know that the drama will continue tomorrow. It always does.