Friday, May 05, 2006

Friends

There’s a long tradition of writing in praise of friendship, though who counts as a friend has varied over the ages and by context.  Some Americans use “friend” as shorthand for “someone I met once someplace and might recognise across the street” - as in “we invited three hundred of our closest friends to the wedding.” In big-hearted America, it sounds like a putdown to say:  “I wouldn’t really call her a friend, she’s an acquaintance.” But, where I grew up in the UK, “friend” was reserved for one’s closest companions.

Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, divided friendships into three types: friendships of utility, pleasure and virtue.  Friendships of utility are based on reciprocal benefits:  you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.  But when the need to itch goes away, so does the friendship.  Friendships of pleasure are also based on fleeting features:  what each of us can do for the other for fun, rather than need.  Our car-pooling colleagues and bar buddies fall into these categories; we don’t expect the relationships to last if we change worksites or watering holes.

The best kind of friendship, said Aristotle, is the friendship of virtue:  it takes a while to build, and lasts much longer than the other kinds.  In these kinds of friendship, we each take pleasure and gain benefits from observing and sharing in the other’s good actions and flourishing lives.  Such friendships endure because they are deep-rooted in each friend’s virtuous nature.

This is pretty ambitious stuff.  Few of us can pretend to Aristotle’s standards of virtue:  we’re surly and erratic and flawed, and yet still we do have friends.  But surely he’s right to see friendship as central to a worthwhile life.  In the seventeenth-century, Francis Bacon noted:  “[A] crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is not love.” Without friends, then, we are left lonely amid the chattering crowd.  Friendship adds depth and meaning to our experience.

I spent the past weekend in Chicago with two friends from way back.  I’ve known these women almost as long as I’ve lived in North America.  It’s true that we packed in lots of events: two plays, a movie, two art exhibits, two fancy dinners, tapas and a brunch.  But mostly what we did was talk as we rode the El, walked the blossom-clotted neighbourhoods of Lincoln Park, and lingered at cafes.

When Francis Bacon considers the benefits of friendship, he focuses on the value of talking with friends.  Friends can ease our burdens by allowing us to express our feelings, the “griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.” By talking things through with a sympathetic listener we gain in self-understanding, he says:  “a man learneth of himself and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not.”

But there’s more to talking with friends than meeting the need to vent and the pleasures of amateur therapy.  When we share our stories, we invite friends to share in our triumphs and frustrations, as we see them.  Thus, friendship is life-enhancing because it links our lives with others whom we care about, expanding our concerns beyond the limits of our own lives.

Broadcast by Louise Collins on May 05, 2006
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