The Dao of Dorian | My Best Friend’s Mistake

On Choosing Each Other

Friendship is something most people think they understand You grow up believing it’s simple. You meet someone. You laugh. You share food. You bond over the same dumb movies. That part’s easy. The part no one warns you about is how a real best friend quietly rewires your entire life. John Dorian never planned on having that kind of friend. He just looked up one day and realized he couldn’t imagine the world without Christopher Turk standing next to him.

It’s funny how friendship works. At first, you don’t think much about it. You spend time together because it’s convenient. Then one day you’re sitting across from someone and you realize they’re the person you trust to tell you if you have something in your teeth. And not just because they think it’s polite, but because they don’t want you wandering around with a spinach smile. That’s when you know it’s real.

Turk had a way of steadying J.D.’s life without acting like he was doing anything important. He was a gravitational force disguised as a goofball. Anytime J.D. drifted off into his own head, which happened more than he’d ever admit, Turk pulled him back to earth with a joke or a look or a half-serious insult. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t gentle. But it was true.

And truth has a way of anchoring you.

The thing J.D. eventually learned is that a best friend protects you from yourself. He didn’t always like that lesson. Sometimes he hated it. There were moments when Turk’s confidence felt blinding, and J.D. couldn’t understand how someone could walk through the world so sure of everything. But that certainty wasn’t arrogance. It was presence. It was being in the moment while J.D. was constantly five thoughts ahead or ten steps behind.

The world needs both types of people, but only one of them remembers to eat on time. That was Turk.

J.D. looked back on those early days and realized he leaned on Turk more than he’d ever leaned on anyone. Not because he wanted to, but because something about Turk made it easy. You don’t choose the people you trust with the softest parts of yourself. They just show up, and if you’re lucky, they stay.

The real lesson buried underneath all the jokes and pranks and arguments is that friendship isn’t measured by how often someone laughs at your stories. It’s measured by how many times they sit beside you when the stories stop being funny.

Turk was there for every panic spiral, every tear, every moment when J.D. felt like he was failing at the thing he wanted most. He didn’t always know what to say. Most of the time he didn’t say anything at all. Sometimes presence is stronger than advice. Silence can hold you together better than words when the world feels like it’s falling apart inside your chest.

But friendship isn’t charity. It’s a two-way road that both people forget to pave sometimes. J.D. wasn’t just a passenger in Turk’s life. He was a partner in the silly and the serious. They built each other in ways no one else could. Every time Turk pretended to be unshakeable, J.D. saw the cracks and helped hold them closed. He never gloated. He never used that vulnerability against him. He simply held space for the truth that even the strongest people bend.

And bending is just another word for being human.

There were moments when J.D. questioned his worth in that friendship. He wondered why Turk stayed loyal, even when J.D. spiraled into self-doubt or made everything more dramatic than it needed to be. In those moments, he forgot something important. People don’t stay because you’re perfect. They stay because you’re honest. Turk never asked J.D. to be anything other than himself. It was permission to be flawed without fear of being abandoned.

That kind of acceptance carves a place inside you that feels like home.

The world tries to tell you that adulthood means standing alone. Taking responsibility. Being independent. And yes, that stuff matters, but independence is hollow without connection. You can accomplish everything you want and still feel lost if no one sees you along the way. A best friend sees you even when you wish they wouldn’t. They see the fear you hide behind jokes. They see the exhaustion you pretend is fine. They see the way you struggle to believe in yourself. And somehow they keep showing up anyway.

J.D. didn’t understand the value of that consistency at first. He thought loyalty was something that only mattered in big moments. But it’s the small moments that build the foundation. The breakfasts. The shared glances. The stupid competitions. The inside jokes that no one else understands. The times someone knocks on your door because they knew you weren’t okay, even when you said you were.

Those aren’t little things. They’re the glue.

But friendship isn’t perfect. There were times when J.D. felt overshadowed by Turk’s confidence. Times when jealousy crept in like a draft through a cracked window. Times when he worried that he was the sidekick in a story that didn’t need him. Those feelings mattered. They were real. And the only way through them was honesty. Friendship requires truth, even the parts that bruise. Especially those parts.

What he eventually learned is that envy isn’t proof that something is wrong with the friendship. It just means you care enough to be afraid of losing it. And fear is always easier to handle when you say it out loud. Turk never dismissed those feelings. He never laughed at them. He just listened, which is its own kind of love.

There’s a point in every friendship when you stop acting like two people who met by chance and start acting like two people who chose each other. Turk and J.D. chose each other every day, even when they annoyed each other, even when they argued, even when life threatened to pull them in different directions. That choice created a bond that wasn’t fragile. It was flexible. It bent. It stretched. It held.

The real lesson of that friendship, the one J.D. didn’t understand until life had knocked him around a few more times, is that sometimes the universe hands you one person who makes the rest of it make sense. A person who sees the best in you even when you’re busy cataloging your flaws. A person who reminds you that living doesn’t have to be lonely, even when the world feels overwhelming.

Turk wasn’t just a friend. He was proof that connection can save you without ever calling itself salvation.

And maybe that’s the heart of the lesson. A best friend isn’t someone who completes you. That’s too tidy, too cinematic. A best friend is someone who steadies you while you learn to complete yourself. Someone who stands close when life gets loud. Someone who lifts you without making you feel small. Someone who keeps choosing you even when the choice is hard.

John Dorian might never fully understand how he got lucky enough to find that kind of friendship. But he knows this much. Life’s better with someone who knows your weird, accepts your chaos, and sticks around anyway.

That’s the real Dao

Author’s Note

This series is my way of looking back at a show that snuck life lessons into comedy and chaos. I’ve made enough mistakes to know that wisdom usually shows up late, but it does show up. If you’re reading this fresh, glad you’re here. We’ll figure the rest out together.