“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods,” C.S. Lewis told us. “Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, ‘Sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.’”
We may read that today as Lewis being cute with hyperbole. But that’s because we aren’t talking about the same things anymore.
Friendship today sets rather low and shallow bar. We feel called to join our compatriots on the couch for game day and maybe even part-take in their recent barbecue experiments. We take on the responsibility of sharing memes back and forth, talking about old times and attending milestones. When it comes time to do the hard work of lending an ear, we do so by agreeing with everything being said and reminding our friend that yes of course, they’re once again right in all things.
It’s no wonder we feel so unfulfilled in our relationships.
I don’t know if we’ve forgotten how to be good friends, or if we’ve constructed a society in which good friendship seldom has opportunity to be exercised. But modern practices barely scratch the surface.
We once defended our friends not just socially but physically, and happily threw ourselves once more into the breach. (Forgive me if you already knew this, but I hear it the other way around so many times that I can’t help but bring it up: the phrase “blood is thicker than water” isn’t a defense of family ties. How could it? Water isn’t defined when reading it in that way; the whole thing becomes half a metaphor. The cliché only makes sense in its full version: “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” It places what we’ve chosen to stand for ahead of our birth circumstances.)
It once meant that we shared resources without keeping score. One of my favorite historical figures is Earnest Shackleton—not just because of his Antarctica story but because of the other parts of his life that are so impossible to reconcile. He repeatedly left his family teetering on the financial brink. He had an extended affair with Rosalind Chetwynd. While raising funds for his expeditions, he was a serial liar and confidence man.
And yet he also knew to do things like this:
During his ill-fated Antarctica expedition, Shackleton took some of his men on a last-ditch, do-or-die rescue mission in a repurposed boat to try to find help for the remaining crew still stuck on Elephant Island. The conditions surpassed dangerous and moved well within the realm of the strange. (The wind was so cold for example that it would freeze the water on their oars like beeswax sticking to a wick when making candles. They constantly had to work to break the ice off of every surface.) But whenever he saw someone—anyone—faltering a bit, he’d issue one of his famous “Hoosh!” orders: without exception, every member of the crew was commanded to drink from their improvised mixture of seal meat, fat and biscuits. This allowed the cold or tired comrade to save face, the breaks held their morale up and the camaraderie kept everyone working together.
It’s not all fun stuff, though. We also used to know how to have difficult conversations with our friends. We get this incredible piece of advice from the Hagakure:
“To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not. One must become close with him and make sure that he continually trusts one’s word. Approaching subjects that are dear to him, seek the best way to speak and to be well understood. Judge the occasion, and determine whether it is better by letter or at the time of leavetaking. Praise his good points and use every device to encourage him, perhaps by talking about one’s own faults without touching on his, but so that they will occur to him. Have him receive this in the way that a man would drink water when his throat is dry, and it will be an opinion that will correct faults.”
Know many people today that possess this level of tact and awareness? I’m afraid that I do not, and I can also hardly count myself.
Above all else, friendship means forgiveness. We have a bit of a cognitive dissonance going on between our insistence on choice and our desire for depth. What that means when it comes to friendship is that we don’t get to have enriching relationships when we ghost people for challenging our worldview. Yes, toxicity exists and yes, social vampires do prowl among the living, but not every heated discussion is proof of narcissism. And even when our friends take that one step too far, when they cross the line that cannot be crossed and we walk away with the intention of doing so forever, it’s to our own benefit that we leave the door open for awhile. Maybe even return to the place of separation when the time is right. We may be surprised by what’s waiting there.
