On Friendship

Friendship may be defined as a complete identity of feeling about all things in heaven and earth: an identity which is strengthened by mutual goodwill and affection. With the single exception of wisdom, I am inclined to regard it as the greatest of all gifts the gods have bestowed upon mankind. Some people, I know, give preference to riches, or good health, or power, or public honours. And many rank sensuous pleasures highest of all. But feelings of that kind are something any animal can experience; and the other items in that list, too, are throughly transient and uncertain. They do not hang on our own decisions at all, but are entirely at the mercy of fickle chance. Another school of thought believes that the supreme blessing is moral goodness; and this is the right view. Moreover, this is the quality to which friendship owes its entire origin and character. Without goodness, it cannot even exist. 

I began reading Cicero's On Friendship today, and was surprised at how simple and beautiful his thoughts on friendship are. The main character of the story, Laelius, in his old age, has just thought his dear friend Africanus, and is relating to his relatives, what his friendship with Africanus was, and why he is grieving differently than most people would. His grief is deep, but not overwhelming because of the strong bond between him and Africanus, and because they have had a full life together. Then he begins to tell what friendship is birthed from, how it is maintained, what is not friendship, and how important friendship is. His insights are very relatable and speak into circumstances that all humans go through or have seen in walking out friendship. Some of it is very hard to hear, other parts are truly a joy to read, but I am thankful for hearing ALL of it. Here are just a few of the beautiful insights:

In speaking of Africanus' death: "If anyone has suffered misfortune, it is myself. But if you let your sorrows at such a happening overwhelm you, this shows how much you love, not your friend, but yourself."

The need for and what friendship is:
"Does the fact that people need friendship mean there is some weakness and deficiency in themselves? If so, this would mean that their main purpose in acquiring friends is to exchange services with another person, that is to say to give and receive benefits which it would be beyond their own individual powers to grant or obtain on their own account. But surely this giving and receiving constitutes only one feature and consequence of friendship. As for its origins, do these not, rather, lie in something altogether more primeval and noble, something emanating more directly from the actual processes of nature? It comes from a feeling of affection, an inclination of the heart."

What friends should not be or expect:
The first opinion is that our feeling for our friends should be identical with our feeling for our own selves.
The second is that our goodwill towards friends should correspond in every respect to their own attitude toward us.
The third point of view is that the value we attach to our friends should be exactly the same as the value they attach to themselves.

"The people who merit your friendship are those who genuinely possess some characteristic capable of inspiring devotion. Such men are rare—for of course it is the hardest thing in the world to find anything, in any field, that is altogether perfect of its kind."

"Unfortunately, however, there is also a good deal of truth in what my friend Terence said in his Woman of Andros: 'Flattery gets us friends, but truth earns ill-will.' Certainly truth of that kind can be very disagreeable, since it does indeed produce ill-will, and ill-will is what poisons friendships. But flattery, is, in fact, much the more tiresome disadvantage of the two, because while it indulges a friend's misdeeds it is also contributing to his ruin. And most culpable of all is the friend who spurns the truth and allows flattery to seduce him into doing wrong."

This last quote is both the most true and hardest of the lot to hear. Many of the friendships I have today, I have indulged and flattered to stay friends, other friendships have or nearly have ended because I chose not to flatter. (Some of it may be my blunt Northern side coming through.) In the former, I am culpable, but in the latter, in some ways I have decided after those outcomes to stay away from friendship. I don't want to spoil the book, but Cicero makes some great points on how great a human's need is for friendship, despite the hardship that comes with maintaining it. Cicero falls back on the great truth of Scripture: love. Friendship springs from love, is maintained by love, bears one another's burdens in love, and remains because of love. Not everyone will bare one another's souls to each other or be best buds, but hostility is unacceptable. There are to be good men in good communion with each other, God, and nature. Even in its weightiness, I cannot help but love Cicero, thank God for his insights, and pray that the truths in his text would come to fruition in my life.