BBB: Don’t obsess over forever.
Tonight I’m thinking about Bojack — admittedly not for the first time.
I don’t want to spend too long explaining what Bojack Horseman is and why you should watch it (but you should definitely watch it).
I want to talk about a quote from the series’ final episode, sourced from a conversation Bojack has with Diana, his ghost writer.
“I think there are people that help you become the person that you end up being, and you can be grateful for them even if they were never meant to be in your life forever.” — Bojack Horseman S6:E16
Throughout the series, we’re introduced to many wacky characters, each with their own unique flair and their individual stories that tie them to Bojack. But at the end of the series, most of those characters are gone.
It got me to think a lot about my friendships. For the longest time, whenever I became friends with someone, I just assumed that the friendship would last forever. When you’re young, you don’t really enter friendships thinking “this’ll end soon.”
You try to keep the conversation going through chats, then promises to meet each other, then you realize it’s been months since you last talked to them. Maybe you still watch their lives happening through your phone screen, but you don’t really know them.
Friendships are weird. We aren’t tied to our friends like how we’re tied to our partners, and friends have no filial obligation to be constantly present like family. It’s easy to become friends with people, and it’s also easy to no longer be friends.
I used to be very sad whenever I realized I was no longer close friends with someone.
I’d spend hours thinking “what did I do wrong?”. I’d try to reach out and spark a conversation. I’d be nostalgic of conversations we had in the past, and how they really helped me at the time.
But I think I’ve reached a point where I know that you can’t hang on to everyone forever. Naturally, we aren’t able to maintain all of our relationships at the same quality forever. Just like how other dip in and out of our lives, we’ll dip in and out of the lives of the people we meet.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
Sometimes, even the most meaningful people in our life won’t stay forever. And maybe they were never meant to. Maybe they were just there to help us get to the next part of our life, but they weren’t meant to come along for the journey. They’re the wise character who helps us in a chapter of our book, but won’t come to the next chapter because they’re busy being the main character in their own book.
Just because they aren’t there anymore, doesn’t mean they’re completely gone from our lives. Just because we don’t talk to them anymore, doesn’t mean we can’t be grateful for them.
Forever is overrated — appreciate people no matter how long they stay in your lives.
