“One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.” –Henry Adams
Those of us who have dear friends are “the luckiest people in the world.” True friendship cannot be bought for any amount of money. It is something that is given freely without condition, and it is more valuable than gold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A friend may well be reckoned a masterpiece of nature,” Abraham Lincoln said, “The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships,” and Aristotle asserted that, “Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”
There are various levels of friendship ranging from casual acquaintances to lifelong bonds of true friendship. In our mobile society, when we move to a new community, many of our casual friendships from the old community gradually fade away and we make new friendships in our new environment. But true, deep friendships will continue to flourish even though the parties may be separated by thousands of miles.
I have a friendship that dates back more than forty years to the time that my friend and I first met when we were both fresh out of graduate school and just beginning our lifetime careers as college professors. We were not in the same discipline or department. I am an economist, and Vic is a sociologist, but, otherwise, we have very much in common with regard to our backgrounds, our interests and our value systems.
About ten years into the friendship, Vic moved on to become dean at another college in another state, where he later became president of the college. So, for the past 30 years, we have lived in different parts of the country hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles apart. But the friendship has continued to grow. We see one another only infrequently, but we stay in touch by telephone and correspondence. Today we use email as our primary method of communication. I have never had a better friend, and I value this friendship enormously.
This forty-year friendship is just a youngster compared to my mother’s close friendship with a childhood playmate. The two were friends for more than ninety years. They were geographically separated over much of that period, but during their final years they lived only thirty miles apart and saw each other almost every week.
For friendships to flourish, there must be a deep, mutual sense of caring about one another. There is no place for selfishness in such friendships, and there is much mutual support. Both parties must work hard to keep the friendship intact, but that just comes naturally to true friends. If we want good friends, we must be good friends, and that means we must care a lot about other people.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2024
Allen W. Smith
