“Inter mundana omnia nihil est quod amicitiae digne praeferendum videatur.” (There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.)
— St. Thomas Aquinas, De regimine principum (On Princely Government)
“For the rest, what we commonly call friends and friendships, are nothing but acquaintance and familiarities, either occasionally contracted, or upon some design, by means of which there happens some little intercourse betwixt our souls. But in the friendship I speak of, they mix and work themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixture, that there is no more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined. If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.”
— Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship,” Essays, Chapter XXVII
“May we not include under the title of conference and communication the quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst friends, pleasantly and wittily jesting and rallying with one another?”
— Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Art of Conference,” Essays, Chapter VIII
“Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,—a possession for all time. … My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series
“… let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series
“A friend therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series
“I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days and graceful gifts and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man’s life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. It should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series
“The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series
“Why can’t we be friends? I want one sadly, and so do you, unless your looks deceive me. We both seem to be alone in the world, to have had trouble, and to like one another. I won’t annoy you by any impertinent curiosity, nor burden you with uninteresting confidences; I only want to feel that you like me a little and don’t mind my liking you a great deal. Will you be my friend, and let me be yours?”
— Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience
“It has by now been sufficiently demonstrated that the human being has, as part of his intrinsic construction, not only physiological needs, but also truly psychological ones. They may be considered as deficiencies which must be optimally fulfilled by the environment in order to avoid sickness and subjective ill-being.
“If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge love and affection and belongingness needs. ….
“The fact is that people are good. Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.”
— Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being
“To be able to have friends is one of the most wonderful things about human existence. Few experiences rival it. It has meant everything to me throughout my life and has made me the person I am. I never forget an old friend.
“I never really chose a friend except upon the criterion that we enjoyed knowing one another. The give and take among friends is wonderful; the sense of acceptance and of affirmation of one’s personhood, yours and theirs. The jokes, confidences, stories, friendly disputations. The things you learn from a friend that you would have otherwise never known. The miraculous meeting and befriending of people whom fate puts in one’s way.
“A friend is someone from whom one does not require approval, only the desire for companionship, the desire to share.”
— Roger W. Smith
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This is a post about friendships: their importance in one’s life (touched upon very briefly here); and, mainly, the importance of trying to maintain them.
How do they start? I would aver, unhesitatingly, that friendships start entirely naturally, and without any fanfare.
You come across someone. You get to talking. You find you have mutual interests (these are a very important glue in friendships), click on some issue; find it pleasant to be talking; sense some mutual compatibility. You don’t think about it much at the time.
This happened to me in my school days and in my neighborhood, in college, and in work and other contexts in my adulthood. Many relationships, needless to say, did not lead to friendships, but, then, an idle conversation, a chance encounter would. You would get to talking and become fast friends almost instantaneously, though at the time it did not seem like anything notable was occurring.
One thing — or a couple — that I think is material is that (1) neither of you has pretensions or reservations about the other person; (2) there are one or two or three “nodal factors” that connect one — for example: you both live nearby and ride your bikes on the same route to school every day; you both love classical music (it doesn’t matter if you agree entirely on preferences); (3) you have an interest — it could be language, literature, history, culture, local attractions, and the like — that the other person can relate to.
It amazes me how often this occurs. I don’t take it for granted, despite the fact that it is a common occurrence. And, it never ceases to gladden me. It helps to make life worth living. More bearable. Immensely satisfying. Because of what other people give you. And the joy of reciprocating.
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Mutual interests can be fructifying when it comes to relationships. For example, I made a friend through my wife not long ago. We would not seem to have that much in common, and he does not share my cultural interests (although he is a highly educated, retired professional). Yet, we are both lifelong baseball fans. It gives us something to talk about. (Though, should the talk be limited to baseball, it would be stultifying.) Sports has always been a “social glue” and a reliable conversation starter for American males, in the workplace and elsewhere. I am certain that there are many such areas of shared interest (in general) among women.
But, it should be noted that — the novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s hilarious, dead on concept of a granfalloon comes to mind — as concerns the initial impetus for a friendship — the prime mover, so to speak — in my experience, it is not shared interests that matter, it is some deeper chemistry. What happens is that you and your friend may discover, probably will, over time, that you have mutual interests, and this will be a sort of bonus factor. But …
Maybe an example will help. You meet someone. It is almost always by serendipity. It is never preplanned. Or at least there were no particular intentions. It may be the case — often is — that you meet because you work for the same company, go to the same school, live in the same town. But, the magic of friendship happens independently of these factors, since most people in one’s workplace, school, or town do not become one’s friends.
So, say someone introduces me to somebody at an event or gathering and assumes that since you both like to collect antiques or you are both golfers you will have something in common — ergo, you will probably want to become friends. It’s actually not likely, and such assumptions are faulty.
Friendship is much deeper and subtler than that and, like all of the exhilarating, wonderful things in life, it happens of its own accord.
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In view of what I see as the importance of one’s being able to form and maintain ongoing friendships with people whom one would not have perhaps expected to form a friendship with or to be able to along with, the question may at some point arise with some friends whom one has acquired, is it worth maintaining the friendship?
To answer my own question and frame the issue in a nutshell, I would say: You’ve got to give people a chance — to extend a friendly hand, so to speak; to show, all things being equal, a willingness to become acquainted with others (rather than acting as if you are too important or busy); to not be too hasty to judge or jump to conclusions with regard to what you might think of the other person.
You’ve got to be willing — once a friendship has been formed, and particularly in the case of longstanding relationships — to put up with the failings and annoying habits of others, if they desire a friendship. (Note that I said “they,” not “you.”)
That is the key, in my opinion, because if the other person desires a friendship, they probably have something to offer.
Don’t turn them away, reject them. You’ll be cutting off your nose to spite your face. You will never know what you may have missed.
Every friend is precious, just as every person is unique and precious. Our lifetimes are finite, and our experience is limited — we can’t get to know everyone. Our life histories — indeed, our personalities — are a “compost” of all the people we have been privileged to become acquainted with. Being a social butterfly with lots of acquaintances is not what I’m talking about — I tend to form deep, lasting friendships. The frequency and nature of your meetings and interactions may vary. But every new friend acquired, every friendship is valuable, a valuable “possession,” as it were. None is superfluous. Recall that hardly anyone was interested in going to Ebenezer Scrooge’s funeral in the vision the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows him in A Christmas Carol.
You’ll be surprised what people — including those you may sometimes find boring, tedious, or difficult — can offer.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule!
People to AVOID:
people who are always negative; and,
people whose only interest in associating with you is as a sounding board for them to talk about their problems. A relationship by definition involves two people. There must be back and forth. It can’t be just be the other person talking about their problems.
To get back to my main point.
People will surprise you with the things they come out with. Just when you have grown tired of them or their company, they will say something interesting or funny; perhaps tell you something you didn’t know; provide information that you were not privy to and are glad to have; provide helpful advice or a useful suggestion or tip.
Sometimes people when you least expect it will reveal something good about themselves — it could be intelligence, insight, their humanity, or a positive or winning character trait that you had not hitherto appreciated.
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Another thing I would like to point out about my experience with friendships — speaking solely from my own experience — is that it behooves one to be patient and to give them time. To hear one’s friends and acquaintances out. To clear the decks for them so to speak, when they want to communicate, talk.
Say, for example, that a friend calls me when I am very busy and I don’t answer the call. I make it a point to tell him that I am sorry I missed the call but that I will get back to him shortly. I tend to refrain from saying that I am “busy,” because that might convey an unstated message that I’m too darn busy to talk now and in the near future. Instead, I simply say that I am sorry I missed the call but will be getting back shortly.
I sometimes do the same thing with an email, if I’ve been sitting on it for, say, two or three days: send back a very brief message saying “pleased to hear from you, will reply at length within the next day or two.” It’s a common courtesy that costs nothing in terms of effort.
Regarding “putting up” with people, when one is very busy. What I have found is that, if I can somehow manage to tear myself away from whatever it is that is preoccupying me and lend an ear, give attention to my friend, it pays off in the long run. I preserve the friendship, and it is usually not a waste of time. Not only because one is sort of acting benevolent, but also because, what I have found is that, at bottom, I myself am not too important or never really that busy to pay attention to someone else. The loss in time that I would have otherwise had to myself — what economists call “opportunity cost” — is a gain in terms of populating my time and life with interesting people and valued friends.
Bottom line: I would say, make time for your friends; create space in the interstices of your life for them to fit into.
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In writing this post, I thought of friends who can sometimes try one’s patience. Who perhaps have annoying habits or seem to be deficient in certain social and interpersonal skills. And, of some who seem to be — at times — lonely and needy. Perhaps because they sense that people are not eager to form friendships with them, or because they have lost a few friends. It has been my experience that if I can manage to persist, in cases were the other person is desirous of companionship and is well intentioned — which is to say does want to establish and maintain a friendship — over time the other person’s defenses seem to be attenuated and the less desirable traits seem to become less noticeable or problematic. What I think may be the case and may be happening is that as the other person senses that you are not inclined to reject them, they relax, become less insecure, and become more companionable and enjoyable to be with. I see this as a win win situation in which I have gained another friend who becomes increasingly enjoyable to be with. One should be grateful for friends, and sometimes those who don’t at first blush seem to have that much to offer can become good friends should you be willing to meet them half way.
And people grow on you. A person’s oddities and neuroses, and habits or opinions of theirs that may be at variance with yours, tend to become less annoying as you get to know and, for the most part, like them. Think of all the characters in Charles Dickens’s works and other fiction who are eccentric yet essentially likeable if not unforgettable.
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A caveat.
I hope I don’t seem ingenuous in what I have been advocating in this post. At the risk of contradicting or undercutting practically everything I have said above, I must admit that there are some people who are just plain pernicious as far as interpersonal relationships are concerned (inimical, at a minimum, to one’s own self-interest, that is), persons who are detrimental to one’s wellbeing when it comes to associating with them. Which is to say that some people might find them to make wonderful friends, but one knows — which is to say that the individual, in this case you or I, knows, by instinct, usually right away, or nearly so — that you and that person will never get along. Not only that, but that you yourself and that person are so different in terms of personalities, core values, and behavior that association should be avoided or kept to a minimum.
From such people, one often gets a sense of derision or outright hostility. To the extent that they are aware of you, they do not esteem you.
Often, it seems — well not that often (if it were a common occurrence, it would not have been much more of a problem) — this has occurred to me with authority figures — a teacher, say; a boss; a coach — who takes an immediately negative view of oneself or deems you wanting in some respect and lets you know it. Not a potential “friendship situation,” but worth mentioning here as something sometimes experienced and instructive in a harsh way.
In other instances where I have experienced an immediate mutual dislike and/or lack of any rapport whatsoever between myself and another person, it was usually with a fellow student or a coworker. One has a sixth sense about such things. I call it the “tip of the iceberg” theory. Very early on, some unpleasantness manifests itself, and one knows that the person should be avoided.
But, I am not talking about friendships here, right? Such “relationships” rarely proceed to that point.
— Roger W. Smith
April 2017; updated August 2020