"What Makes A Good Friend?"

In the dwindling cold of the winter, a lost soul sits right in front of me.

There is silence everywhere.

No word is enunciated.

Not a thing is expressed.

Strangely, in the midst of it all, the friendship develops in nurturing stillness.

As the days pass by, somehow, the unheard thoughts resound more profoundly than those that are spoken.

Sadly, like all things in life (especially the ones that mean so much more to us), they don't stay long enough.

"The friends we know we meet along the way," as the famous line of a song goes, "too soon the times we share form part of yesterday."

In the same quietness, I ask: 

What makes a good friend?

To my mind, real friendship is never about: "we are friends insofar as we enjoy each other's benefits." For if it is, then friends are but mere objects of utility intended for a definite purpose for a certain period of time.

Neither is frienship based solely on pleasures. I can't be friends with someone only when all is else is satisfying, agreeable or fun. Nor do I leave him right off whenever life becomes repulsive and dreadful. Otherwise, the affinity becomes contentious. After all, "the best time to make friends," as Ethel Barrymore beffitingly says, " is before you need them."

Personally, true friendship doesn't diminish in the absence of merit or gratuity nor does it find comfort merely on what is receptively gratifying.

For it to last, like authentic love, it must instantiate a deeper sense of connection, an intensely personal one; that which captivatingly brings out the "magic of togetherness" that they alone exclusively understand and enjoy.

Further, true friendship respects, recognises and appreciates individuality.  I value your strengths and weaknesses as a human person in the same way that you value mine. Hence, we don't infringe nor unjustly consume each other's integrity. "[For] my best friend," according to Aristotle, "is the [one] who in wishing me well wishes it for my own sake."

Again, what makes a good friend?

The abovementioned is nothing more than a subjective sentiment. 

It is no perfect answer.

But, I know one thing: wherever my friends go,  they carry with them a part of me as I carry with me a part of them. 

Forever AND always.

07.11.2020

01:14 AM