Editor’s note: This article, originally published on January 28, 2018, has been updated.
Get ready to feel all the feels! September 22, 2019 marks 25 years since the premiere of Friends! That’s right, it was 1994 when Rachel Green first ran into Central Perk in her wedding dress, looking for high school friend Monica Geller. And the rest is (television) history!
You can of course easily binge-watch all 236 episodes of Friends back to back on Netflix in Kuwait, which has been the case since 2018! We’ve happily said goodbye to 85 hours of our life, and plan to start again with this week’s celebration!
The original show is what young us thought life would be like in our twenties and thirties. Growing up in a region that felt light years away from Manhattan, we were those starry-eyed kids wishing we could live in that cool purple-walled apartment with our best friends.
Most of us in Kuwait watched the show on Orbit’s America Plus. This was in the era before fast internet streaming, so we may have procured “not so legal” copies from the Jabriya Home Video store. Thank god for Netflix these days!
(Are you a true Friends fan? Try this trivia below!)
The show made us and still makes us laugh no matter what, but we did learn a few lessons. Some of them were positive and some were complete misdirections.
Friends are great, but they aren’t everything
The show made us think that our adult friendships would be strong and last forever. This was the hardest lesson of all. People move away, grow apart and just change. There is nothing you can do about it. Just make more friends.
Don’t put yourself in a box
We pigeon-holed ourselves into archetypes. You were either Monica, Rachel or Phoebe. It felt easier and was consistent with how we were raised. You were either good or bad. Right or wrong. But now we know that personality is so much more fluid than that. You might share a trait or two with Monica (we hope it is the obsessive cleanliness) but you can also love singing “Smelly Cat”.
You could totally be a dinosaur doctor
Growing up in the Middle East, your parents only gave you two career options. You could be a doctor or an engineer, that was it. Ross being a paleontologist blew our minds! We could suddenly imagine ourselves being so many different things. So liberating!
New York is the coolest place to live
Friends wasn’t the only sitcom that made NYC look like it was the coolest place, but it is the one that left the biggest impression on our young minds. We were so ready to book a one-way ticket and go make our way in the world. It made our lives feel so provincial, insignificant and uninteresting. Fortunately, we have since realized that the world is a huge and interesting place and we really can live anywhere. But we still have a soft spot for the Big Apple.
You don’t have to marry your friend
If you can’t find your Ross, find a Mike. You don’t have to be with a person you have known forever. That is the whole thing about love and relationships, you get to know the other person along the way.
But you can marry your best friend
But then again – if there is a Chandler in your life, don’t be afraid to go for it. A relationship built on history and years of friendship has its benefits. He knew you before you got braces or lost the weight and is still around. Besides he will always be totally real with you.
Featured Image is from a Friends-inspired Bazaar recreation of the iconic intro scene.
