Best Friends

During a conversation on Saturday, I found myself referring to 'my best friend'. That led me to thinking about what the term 'best friend' and what it means. First of all, I thought about all the qualities that go into being a friend: a good listener, common interests, dependability, same sense of humour, same morals/ethics etc. Then I thought that in order to be a 'best' friend, you've got to be the best at each one of those qualities.

The person to whom I mentioned 'my best friend' was, although not my best friend, a really good friend and I started to think whether it's an insult to refer to someone as 'my best friend' when you're speaking to someone other than your BF (best friend). I thought about what kind of message that must have sent to the friend that I was talking to. To me, it would send the message of "While I value our friendship and I think you're really great, you're not good enough to be my 'best' friend. You're only my 'really good friend' or my 'really close friend'. Keep trying though...if you work on your listening skills and your sense of humour, I think I can see you working your way up to that 'best friend' position within a year or two. Of course, my best friend's productivity would have to be on a downslide for that to happen...but you never know! Keep up the good work!"

On the flip side, I started thinking about the term 'worst enemy'. I now see the word as an oxy-moron. Again, take into consideration all qualities that go into making someone your enemy: backstabbing, not dependable, malicious, ignorant, rude etc. Then think about the term 'worst'. Worst is the opposite of best. The word best means "excelling all others ". So, if you're the worst at being an enemy, wouldn't it mean that you're the worst at backstabbing, the worst on being undependable, the worst at being malicious? Therefore, you wouldn't be very good at being an enemy at all. You'd sort of just be a really crappy friend, wouldn't you? The term 'best enemy' is much more suitable - you'd be the best backstabber, the best at being ignorant, the best at being rude, etc. If the above line of thinking is somewhat correct, then somewhere in the mix of things you'd have to have a 'worst friend', right?

What do the readers think? Agree? Disagree? I've been told there are some difficulties in leaving comments. I'm trying to get that sorted out. But I really do appreciate the comments that are left on this blog!

And so it "friendly" goes...