What Is a True Friend? - National Logistics Post

Friendship is a strange thing. It’s almost impossible to define. It isn’t easy to measure, either. How much does a friendship weigh? How big is it? What physical and chemical properties does it possess? You can’t measure it by the number of calls someone makes, because Mom isn’t exactly a friend. You can’t measure it by the hours you spend together, because your boss, after all, isn’t necessarily your friend. And you can’t measure it by the number of letters they write you, because the IRS definitely isn’t a friend.

So, what is a friend? I used to give this definition: someone you can invite to your table for Christmas. But it’s inaccurate, because popes often gather a lot of needy people around their table at Christmas, and they aren’t exactly their friends. Perhaps the most precise, innocent, and beautiful definition of friendship was given to us by C. S. Lewis: “Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…’” And, without a doubt, the most horrendous definition of friendship was provided by Montesquieu: “Friendship is a contract by which we oblige ourselves to do small favors for others so that they will do great favors for us.”

Something magical about friendship, in any case, is that it doesn’t require agreement on everything.

Beyond the definition, of which everyone will have their favorite, there is the matter of constancy. How long should a friendship last? Are friends forever, as an old Spanish song says? Obviously not. Are friends only made in childhood? I suppose not, because many childhood best friends will become unbearable adults, or end up in prison for horrendous crimes, or, worse still, join the Democratic Party.

Something magical about friendship, in any case, is that it doesn’t require agreement on everything. People are saddened when a brother who is on the right becomes a leftist, or vice versa, but this doesn’t happen so much with a friend. A friend is even allowed to go a little crazy, to make mistakes, to lose their way; perhaps that’s why we’re there for them, to tell them so, if necessary. Arguing isn’t an impediment to friendship. “It is not merely true that a creed unites men,” wrote G. K. Chesterton, “Nay, a difference of creed unites men — so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Muslim and a chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. ‘I say God is One,’ and ‘I say God is One but also Three,’ that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.”

Friendship is, they also say, a treasure. True. But sometimes we overvalue it. It isn’t a god or a religion. It doesn’t replace other affections, and it doesn’t solve every problem. Over the years, friends come and go, and rarely are they all there for you at the precise moment you need them, or during the moments that matter most. There’s no need to be shocked by this; you won’t always be there for them in those kinds of moments, either. When it happens, when a friend appears in the darkest moment, when sadness has bitten you, friendship becomes something luminous and infinite. But in reality, the only constant, unchanging, and completely reliable friendship is the one we have with God.

Perhaps because friendship is something small and delicate, it breaks too easily. They say politicians have no friends, and perhaps the famous reflection attributed to Aristotle is dedicated to them: “He who is a friend to all is a friend to no one.” A politician on the campaign trail (they’re always campaigning these days) is everyone’s friend. True friends are usually few. The newest friends are louder, more present. Old friends seem to fade with time and distance, but suddenly, when the lights go out at night, and your ship is adrift, you find them by your side, like a shadow of hope, and you even feel like crying with emotion.

The forms of loneliness in postmodern times are endless. We are more surrounded by people than ever, and also more alone than ever. New technologies bring us closer to distant friends, but they also connect us with a lot of people who seem like friends, but whom we would never invite to the Christmas table. Perhaps the key is empathy, a quality that is losing value in this century of frivolity. Empathy is the ability to feel what another person feels, to see the world from where they stand. Empathy knows no selfishness. In days of rampant individualism, insensitivity, and brutalization, empathy languishes. Without empathy, friendship is nothing more than the cold contract Montesquieu spoke of. A horror.

Some of my best friends left for heaven far too soon, the last one just a few months ago, in his 50s. Strange as it may seem, I feel them closer than some of those still on earth. Their presence is implicit, their advice still echoes in the words they once spoke, and their distant embrace is the hope that one day, not too far off, we will be able to hug again, tell each other what we’ve seen along the way in their absence, and share a bottle of wine. Perhaps there is a certain yearning for eternity in true friendship.

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