Metaphors and Multi-doored Mansions

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‘Instagram’ and ‘wisdom’ are two words I’m careful about putting in the same sentence. Forever a cynic of fluffy quotes and feel-good rhetoric, it’s not my first port of call for clarity on my existence. Everything I consume on Instagram is taken with a grain of salt and a slice of lemon. Because much like tequila, if you don’t set boundaries on your consumption, you’re not going to know who you are anymore. With that in mind, I want to share a caption by Jedidiah Jenkins that left me with a sever perspective hangover:

“I was asked last week, ‘who is your best friend? I don’t know. I don’t use language like that anymore. It doesn’t fit. I have friends that hold the keys to different parts of my personality. Some open my heart. Some my laughter. Some my mischief. Some my sin. Some my civic urgency. Some my history. Some my rawest confusion and vulnerability. Some friends, who may not be ‘the closest’ to me, have the most important key for me in a moment of my life. Some, who may be as close as my own skin, may not have what I need today. It’s ok if our spouses or friends don’t have every key. How could they? It isn’t a failure if they don’t open every single door of who you are. The million-room-mansion of identity cannot overlap perfectly with anyone.  

But I will say, my closest friends have a key ring on their hip with lots of keys, jingling.”

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of my linguistic benders, then you may well have heard me regurgitate this metaphor. I’ve reflected that as we grow up, we’re force fed the concept of best friends, day ones, ride till you dies. They’re built up as something we must aspire to have, to hold, and to never let go of. We construct sky-high expectations of this relationship and so often tie our worth to its success. We’re convinced that one person can satisfy all the complex, multi-faceted layers of our being.

Wanting to be everything that a person needs is both unhealthy and impossible. Humans thrive when they feel as though every part of themselves is seen and their interests are indulged - to task yourself with doing that for someone is a dis-service to the value you innately add to their life. Herculean expectations such as these are a breeding ground for resentment, when you feel like you are falling short for someone or that they are always falling short for you, that disappoint can manifest as cruel behaviour towards the people you love. In our effort to prove our all-encompassing love and friendship, we’ve achieved the very opposite, a resentful and uncomfortable sense of never being enough for someone.

Never has an Instagram caption had such a huge impact on my perspective and such a positive influence on how I relate to the people in my life. I was guilty of believing that a persons reliance on me was a healthy form of validation and evidence of my value as a friend. My constant striving towards being the person that could offer them everything was slowly diluting the reasons for which these friendships were forged in the first place. Understanding what doors I opened for each of my friends and what doors they opened for me was liberating; it allowed me to sand, stain and polish these doors whilst letting go of trying to make my keys fit in every lock.  

It also helped me deal with the oh so human emotion of jealousy, the type that sits quietly in the corners of three-way friendships (you know the one’s) and rears its venomous head when taunted with distance and time apart. It can hurt us to see the people we love, loving someone else and that’s a natural feeling to have. What’s important is to challenge the idea that it should have any impact on that persons capacity to love you. Love is not comparable - each example of it is unique - my energy for love is not finite and I don’t care to build a hierarchy, doing so would illustrate the opposite of what love represents to me. 

The person I’m most vulnerable with is not the person I laugh with the most. 

The person who indulges my creativity is not the person who holds me in a firm embrace.

The people I have known for a moment have no less value than the people I have known for a lifetime. 

Finally and foremost, I want to acknowledge the people who have remained frequent visitors of my multi-doored mansion, warming up the living room and making space for all those who come by. For giving some doors an extra nudge when they don’t budge the first time and for restoring others to their original glory. For being gracious when a door is not theirs to open and for knocking before they enter. If that’s not healthy, unconditional love, then I better get back on Instagram to find out what is.