I think about how much depends upon a best friend. Then you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it's not.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the significance of a best friend in providing a sense of stability and comfort in life.
John Green's quote highlights the profound role that a best friend plays in our lives, similar to the dependable support of the ground beneath our feet. Just as we trust that the floor will always be there to hold us up, a best friend offers emotional stability and assurance, becoming an integral part of our daily existence. This relationship fosters resilience, allowing us to stand confidently in the face of life's uncertainties.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of relationships, this quote can illustrate the foundational role friends play in our lives.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.
I want to be distinguished from the rest; to tell the truth, a friend to all mankind is not a friend for me.
We Masons are among the fortunate ones who are taught to meet together with others opposing convictions or competitive ideas and yet respect each other as Brothers.
You have to work hard at staying in contact with your friends so that the relationships will continue and live on... Friendships, along with love, make life worth living.
All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks.
When I do retire, I will miss the trips with the team, the jokes with my teammates, the habits: having breakfast with them, playing with them, all the little things.
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