When we’re young and in school, filtering in and out of classrooms and on and off athletic fields, hearing the constant noise of our companions to whom we are seemingly conjoined like darting fish in a shared current, we may overlook the bounty of society. Later as life propels us forward through advanced studies, careers, travel and the myriad demands of existence we develop differences into which we separate from the herd and become progressively distant from one another. We begin meeting new people of entirely different and unpredicted parallels. We may even fall in love. Yet amid this flux the connection or acquaintance which stands out from all the others is that of friendship, whether newly formed or continuing from adolescence. Friendship, that undeniable preserve of distinction, can mark a lifetime like an embossed stamp.
As we grow older and our engagement with society diminishes – whether by retirement, relocation or intellectual divergence – the value of friendship becomes ever more apparent. There was a time I questioned whether I had mistaken mere acquaintances for true friends, conflating utility, convenience, tolerability and entertainment with something far more profound. I sometimes rationalized that friendships faded with distance, or that true friendship was meant to be rare by its very nature. I even wondered if friendship were simply the product of chance correspondence rather than an essential and sustaining bond.
Certainly I was correct not to have projected friendship nor to have enumerated it by catalogue. Friendship, having its enigmatic euphemism combined with freedom from purpose, was not a caliber of relationship to which one connects by design. Imperceptibly at first the quality of friendship develops; it is a personality of its own which attaches by specks to the initial growth and like a vine overtakes the structure that first supported it. Friendship, though fundamental, is a complex psychological relationship, far surpassing the limitations of most other alliances. It is a sustaining and enlarging bond, one that withstands the erosion of time.
My confession from this analysis is not that I have misconstrued acquaintances as friendships (which I have); not that I have been deprived the privilege of friendship (which I have not); not that my sometimes circuitous pathway in life has diminished the possibility of friendship (au contraire). My acknowledgement is that the greatest friendships of my life are those that I have enjoyed for a very long time. In my indecision about friendships I have clouded the investigation with entirely unnecessary fog. Friendship is never an external venture. Friendship is not contaminated by visceral or venereal features. It is not transactional. Its presence is quiet and unassuming, seldom demonstrably conjoined with another. Friendship is a peaceful, silent yet paradoxically self-evident attribute. Foremost it stands the test of time.
When once one has admitted the limitation of friendship – the further recognition of which is superfluous on all accounts – the more effective industry is that devoted to the characterization of what other associations one has. This is so because definition or clarity survives most meaningfully by contrast. Overthinking matters can of course be a useful exploit; however in this context – that is, one of such compelling significance – I feel there is advantage to be garnered. Nor is it a simple matter of, “You’re known by the company you keep!” Rather the particulars of the quality of an association predict the outcome; just as its misinterpretation can lead one astray. There is too value in asserting the gold that underlies a friendship.
Too often we overlook what is before our eyes. Nothing is more convenient than friendship. Friendship does not require practice or preparation. It does though cry out for awareness, freed of objective or importance. Friendship is an ineffable state of being – at least in words – but otherwise an incalculable presence, the existential copula.
Whereas in friendship, ’tis a general and universal fire, but temperate and equal, a constant established heat, all gentle and smooth, without poignancy or roughness.
“Those are only to be reputed friendships that are fortified and confirmed by judgement and the length of time.” —Cicero, De Amicit.
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. There is, beyond all that I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union. We sought one another long before we met, and by the characters we heard of one another, which wrought upon our affections more than, in reason, mere reports should do; I think ’twas by some secret appointment of heaven. We embraced in our names; and at our first meeting, which was accidentally at a great city entertainment, we found ourselves so mutually taken with one another, so acquainted, and so endeared betwixt ourselves, that from thenceforward nothing was so near to us as one another.
“While I have sense left to me, there will never be anything more acceptable to me than an agreeable friend.” —Horace, Sat.
I was so grown and accustomed to be always his double in all places and in all things, that methinks I am no more than half of myself.
Excerpts From
Michel de Montaigne
“The Essays of Montaigne — Complete”