Part 2
Youth is wasteful of many things, but perhaps of nothing more than of friendship. Too many people wake up later in life to find that what has been so thoughtlessly thrown away never can be regained. The privilege of having a friend and the privilege of being a friend are among the greatest blessings this world affords. To discover in middle life that the friends of one's youth have, one by one, fallen away, because one made no effort to keep them, will be a sad awakening.
We all have our own conception of friendship, based upon our own experiences; thus to no two persons does the term mean exactly the same. To some the content of the word grows richer and deeper as life goes on, while with others the reverse is true. The cynic believes there is no such thing as true friendship, yet the cynic once was young and probably not a stranger to the transforming power of friendship. What we are to believe about friendship, then, depends upon our own character and upon the kind of life we live.
It takes ideal people to form an ideal friendship; therefore there are not many such friendships. Erring human beings that we are, we carry our frailties into every relation of life. "I am of opinion," says Cicero, "that except among the virtuous, friendship cannot exist." Have you a real friend? While it is true that the friendship between you may not be an ideal one, it is also true that through it you and your friend are both having a rare opportunity to grow toward your ideal and in this way to make your friendship perfect. Would you rid yourself of egregious faults? There are two instead of one to grapple with each fault. Would you march on to the attainment of more splendid virtues? There are two instead of one to struggle and to win the victory.
How to make friends perhaps no one can tell you, since friends are born, not made. We choose our pleasures, our books, our occupations, but we do not choose our friends. We only discover them. The formation of a friendship is an unconscious process and must be so. There can be nothing deliberate and premeditated about it. Why is it that one sees the best in you and another the worst? Why does one understand before you speak while another cannot understand even after you explain? If we could answer these questions we should be able to reduce friendship to a mathematical formula, which no one wishes to do. The mystery of it is one of its charms. One can only say as did Montaigne about his friend, "If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him I can only answer, because it was he, because it was I." Some people attract us by a certain intuition of character. If the intuition be true and if there be adaptability and community of interests, a foundation exists for a close and enduring friendship.
The basis for friendship is personality. You have nothing to give your friend but yourself. You should, therefore, make heavy demands upon yourself. Can you offer your friend anything less than a constantly enriching life? Good intentions are not enough; there must be performance. You have probably asked yourself many times whether you deserve this high friendship. Perhaps you do not. Then resolve that you sometime will deserve it. You are interesting to your friend now. What can you do that you may be more so to-morrow?
Those who lack the power of making friends--and there are unfortunately many such--have one of two failings, or both. Often they are not sincere. The insincere person cannot be a true friend and may not have a true friend. We demand that our friends shall "ring true." A much more common fault than insincerity is selfishness. One may be not positively and actively selfish but self-centered. The self-centered person does not know how to enter sympathetically into the feelings of others. Such persons should earnestly strive to share the joys and sorrows of those about them and to make the experiences of others their own. Sometimes we say of a person, "He has a genius for making friends." Such persons have in an eminent degree the capacity for carrying close to their hearts the interests of others. Remember that unless you really care about the concerns and the welfare of others, there is no possible way to make them believe you do.
It is worth while to cultivate the art of making friends, or, rather, it is worth while to put forth every effort to make one's self worthy of having friends. He who said that a friend "doubles our joys and halves our sorrows" might have expressed it even more strongly. The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes understood this when he wrote, "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him."
You owe your friend, first of all, integrity of character and sincerity in all your dealings. With your friend you can be yourself, your real self. Any pretense, any deceit, any concealment of vital things will create a barrier that nothing can ever break down. You may or you may not admit your friend to the inmost recesses of your heart, but so far as you do admit her, there must be straightforward honesty. Integrity includes not only our dealings with our friends, it affects all our relations with others. The oft-quoted couplet from Lovelace expresses a truth which it behooves every one to take to heart who would be or would have a friend:--
"I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more."
No real friendship can exist without loyalty on both sides. It is the place of a friend to look after the interests of her friend as if they were her own. Much inspiration may be gained from studying the great friendships of history, such as that of David and Jonathan, of Ruth and Naomi, or of Tennyson and Hallam. Does your friendship in comparison with any one of these seem insignificant, even puerile? Then use the greatest friendship of which you know as a touchstone by which to test your own. For a real friend to speak an unkind word about an absent friend is unthinkable. To envy her, or to desire precedence over her in any way, is proof that your love for her is not real, but only assumed. How far should loyalty go? We all remember the answer of Christ when asked, "How often should I forgive my brother, until seven times?" His answer, until "seventy times seven," means, as we all know, that there should be no limit to one's forgiveness. In the same way, there should be no limit to your loyalty to your friend. It should be bounded only by her need and your power.
Of course, there should be community of interests and mutual trust and self-revelation. You have friends whom you admit only to the outer citadel of your heart. Some are "good company" and you love to share your pleasures with them, but in your serious moments you turn away from them. Others share your work, or some special interest in your life. But with your real friend you share the deepest things of your existence. She understands you in your highest moments, she respects your ideals and shares them, she comprehends the fundamental purpose of your life. Only friends who can share each other's best selves know the highest friendship.
I have said that there must be mutual self-revelation. Never make the mistake of urging the confidence of your friend. Do not force any doors. If you have not the key that unlocks her heart, try to find it by making yourself worthy. Self-giving must be voluntary or it is in vain. We elicit from others only that which we have the power to make our own. Mutual trust would forever banish all petty jealousy. Your friend is not accountable to you for all her doings, and for you to act as if she were will only estrange her from you. Life is too rich in opportunity for her to be limited by any one relationship. If your friend's life is to expand, her claims upon others and theirs upon her must be recognized.
If your friendship is a worthy one, you are constantly gaining in patience, in courtesy, and in self-control, for love is the greatest of all teachers. Do you promptly check each impatient word that springs to your lips? Do you show the friend who so easily overlooks your faults the same fine courtesy that you show to the stranger who would not overlook them? What a strange idea we sometimes have that love gives us the privilege of rudeness! Your friend may love you in spite of an occasional fit of ill-temper, but no one ever loved another better for it. To be exacting, domineering, or selfish may not drive your friend completely away from you, but it will not strengthen the tie that binds your hearts together.
There should be a certain equality between friends. I do not mean that love is not able easily to bridge over many kinds of inequalities, as that of a difference in station in life or in age, or even in education. I mean that a friendship is harmful when one of the friends is a parasite, receiving everything and contributing nothing. Self-respect demands that each shall give as well as receive.
In his essay on "Friendship," Emerson says no truer word than this: "Your friend is he who makes you do what you can." One must not be a fault-finder or a thorn in the flesh of one's friends, yet friendship has no more sacred duty than to point out faults by showing the better way. "He who truly loves is irreconcilable to faults in one whom he loves; they blur the vision which always lies in his soul."
On the other hand, it is especially the office of a friend to recognize the excellencies of his friend. "Your friend is he who tells you of your virtues and who insists upon them most when you are most inclined to doubt their existence." Who of us is not at times sorely in need of this kindly office of a friend? In our moments of discouragement, when faith in self is at a low ebb, the true friend comes to us and by his faith in us restores the balance of life. And what a comfort then is that belief in us and in our powers and possibilities! Friends who do not perform this office, each for the other, as often as the opportunity arises, have missed much of the blessedness of true friendship!
Those who love know that love is not blind. Love has the truest sight. If you want to know what a person really is, do not ask one who hates him, but one who loves him. Yet love may blind itself. To shut your eyes to the faults of your friend is not the way to lessen those faults. To stand between her and the penalty which her deeds have justly brought upon her is to deprive her of one of the most important means of growth. If your affection is of a poor and narrow sort, you will constantly urge your friend to consult her own pleasure and interests in preference to those of others, in this way stifling in her every altruistic impulse. Acting and reacting upon each other in this way you will find that generous feeling and disinterested affection in both of you will constantly diminish. Any two people who love each other should cherish, each in the other, the spirit of self-forgetful service.
A friendship, like everything else in life, is known by its fruits. "Men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs from thistles." The fruits of a worthy friendship are higher and ever higher ideals of life and duty. If your friendship has made you less sensitive to other obligations and less responsive to the call of duty, beware of it! If your love for one has lessened your affection for your other friends, it is not a good friendship. Friendship should expand the heart, not contract it. Everything savoring of narrowness and exclusiveness is a hindrance. You must love your friend so much that you love the whole world better because of her. You must respect and reverence her so truly that all human nature is dignified and ennobled through her.
"All things through thee take nobler form And look beyond the earth; The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth."
What is the place of the emotional element in friendship? Not the chief place, it may be confidently asserted. In the richest and most enduring friendships, other things are of more importance. Not that there is an absence of emotion--far from it. The danger, however, of over-emphasizing emotion is that the friendship may descend to mere sentimentality. What is more important than emotion in friendship, do you ask? The unity of spirit that gradually takes place in a fine friendship; the feeling that each is perfectly understood by the other; and the knowledge that each can depend upon the other's loyalty in any and every emergency of life.
It usually takes years to learn how to _be_ a true friend and often some hard experiences are necessary to teach us to appreciate our friends. Sometimes we look back upon the wasted years, and, thinking how rich and happy they might have been, we cry out, "If I had only known!" And sometimes, alas! our friends have to be taken from us ere we learn their worth. Then, as we sit alone with our thoughts, with what a heartache do we remember our every failure to measure up to the stature of the perfect friend!
If you would be a true friend and if you would appreciate your friends now, without waiting for costly lessons, ask yourself some searching questions. Do you care more about what you can get out of your friendship or about what you can put into it? Do you think more about being served or about serving? Do you wonder whether your friend loves you enough or whether you cannot love her more? Do you never imagine yourself slighted or neglected or misunderstood? If you can answer these questions as they ought to be answered, you are on the way to a perfect friendship. Phillips Brooks, who was famous for his friendships, wrote, "Surely there is no more beautiful sight to see in all this world than the growth of two friends' natures, who, as they grow old together, are always fathoming with newer needs deeper depths of each other's life and opening richer views of one another's helpfulness."
Does friendship cost anything? Yes. All the best things in the world cost something and only they can have them who are willing to pay the price. In its highest and most enduring form friendship belongs, as I have said, only to the highest and finest natures. So much does it cost that no others will--perhaps no others can--pay the price. What is the price? That is the point--one never knows the cost in advance. Whatever the price, however, the true friend is ready to pay it. No sacrifice is too great to make for a real friend.
Yet, sad to say, many a friendship makes shipwreck even though no heroic, sublimely self-sacrificing deeds were demanded of either of the parties to it. The things that would have kept it alive were so little, so easy, but they were too much! After your school days are over and you and your friend have gone your separate ways, it will take time to write those weekly letters. Will your friendship be worth enough to you to pay that price? And by and by, when new interests have come into your life, it will be even less easy to perform those offices of friendship which must not be neglected if friends are to continue to have any share in each other's lives. To keep up the pretty customs of old--to send the birthday gift, the Christmas remembrance, the occasional message of warm and unchanging love--all these things take time in such a busy world! And so "the little rift within the lute" appears, which, ever widening, will slowly silence all. It is not a cheerful story, but it is the history of many a friendship which had believed itself eternal. Some of our early friendships we outgrow, and it is best that we should. It is part of "putting away childish things." But if we realized what we were doing, it is inconceivable that we should ever depart so far from the dreams of our youth as to let any true friendship go.
Unless you are very watchful and loving, then, the old friends will, one by one, drop out of your life and make no sign. I beg that you will see to it that there is at least a handful of them left. They should be the real ones, who genuinely loved you and always will. "Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel." Never let them go. Let no changing tides of fortune sweep them from you. Be very patient with them as you expect them to be with you. Make allowances for the innumerable appearances of neglect, saying to yourself that they are only appearances. Friends who bear and forbear with each other in this way will find that the friendship grows deeper and stronger with each succeeding year.
If you really want to be such a friend as I have described, I can think of nothing that will help you more than to read over often the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, that matchless chapter on _love_, and to try to make your affection as near as possible like that which he describes. Nowhere else, in the Bible or out of it, have we so clear, so true, so moving a description of love. Just to read it over brings a glow to the heart and a kindlier feeling toward the whole human race. Let the love that you give to your friends be the love that suffereth long and is kind; that envieth not, that seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked; that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; above all, that _never faileth_.
III
THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS
You may not think living with others is an art, but it is one of the finest and most difficult of arts. By learning it early in life we save ourselves many unpleasant experiences. If we are difficult to live with, our punishment is severe and inexorable. No one will live with us who can escape from us. We all know people who, upon entering a room, bring with them a cloud. On the other hand, we also know those whose coming always brings sunshine. Some one said of a young friend of mine of unusually radiant personality, "When she went down the corridor it seemed as if a light had passed by." A Boston daily paper once had this item: "Yesterday was dark and rainy, but Phillips Brooks passed down Newspaper Row and the sun shone." It goes without saying that these persons were good to live with.
One may be honest, sincere, generous, and, in the main, kind, and yet be difficult to live with because of the absence of the so-called lesser virtues. We must have the elemental virtues as foundations of character, but they are not enough. As a Bible writer puts it, it is "the little foxes that spoil the vineyards." The "little foxes" are the little faults which arise within us almost unnoticed, and which grow upon us with added years. Some of these faults cause people to want to avoid us and seek the company of those who are pleasanter to have about. To want to be liked is a laudable desire when one does not sacrifice anything higher for it. To aim to be a person whose presence brings gladness to others is not only your right, but your duty. There is a cheap popularity which those who seek it are willing to purchase at any cost. That is not what I am talking about. I will name some of the little faults which often spoil an otherwise admirable character.
_Unnecessary criticism of others._ I say _unnecessary_ criticism. All honor and praise to the one who can speak the word of admonishment or reproof when it ought to be spoken and in the right spirit and the right manner; who can give warning or suggestion at the proper time and place and in a tactful way. We all need more friends who are not afraid to tell us of our faults with the high motive of aiding us to overcome them; who will even run the risk of losing our friendship in order that they may help us to be true to our best selves. But how much of the fault-finding in the world does any good or is intended to do any good? Is it not true that much of it merely gives vent to irritability on the part of the fault-finder? The next time you are tempted to find fault, ask yourself two questions: First, will it do any good? Next, am I doing it in the right spirit? Unless these two questions can be answered in the affirmative, then silence is golden. Moreover, criticism should, whenever possible, be tempered with praise. We can take much from one who recognizes the good in us and who knows that our virtues far outweigh our failings.
Another of the little foxes is _fretfulness_, _grumbling_, _nagging_, call it what you will. We all recognize it when we come in contact with it and probably we have been shocked at times to discover it in ourselves. This fault grows rapidly in the atmosphere of loving tolerance. It never would have an opportunity to develop in us if we were not surrounded by those who love us, make excuses for us, and put up with us. Strangers would not submit to it and we should not think of asking them to do so. It is a subtle danger, that creeps on us so stealthily that often we are not aware of its approach. It may come at first from some disordered physical state. The happy, healthy child does not whine, the ailing child usually does; too often this is the beginning of an irritability that pursues its victim through life.
We Americans are a nervous, excitable people, partly, perhaps, because of climatic conditions. A stimulating climate fosters a tendency to disorders of the nervous system. We should, therefore, be on our guard against this type of sin that doth so easily beset us. Our physical condition is usually more within our control than we are willing to admit. The girl who keeps late hours, takes little exercise, and eats injudiciously is morally responsible for her irritable condition, for the remedy is in her own hands. Can you not remember some time when you retired at night feeling ill-used and unappreciated, filled with the thought that life was full of trials and crosses and that your lot was particularly unhappy--only to wake up the next morning in a glorious world where your condition in life seemed a very fortunate one? It is not necessary to adduce arguments to prove that one of your first duties is to keep yourself every day and every hour of your life in the best possible physical condition. You can conquer only by making it a matter of conscience. Alternating work and rest, sufficient recreation and amusement, and always some change after prolonged labor are necessary to keep one in good physical condition. As a result, you find yourself in possession of a serenity and a self-control which forbid irritability.
Have you a quick, hot _temper_? You cannot live amicably with others until you have learned to control it. A display of temper is the flash of lightning, the burst of flame. It is all over in an instant, yet, in a fit of temper what may one not say or do? He is "beside himself," we say--that is, he is no longer himself, but some one else outside of himself. Have you ever, in a burst of temper, wounded those you love best in all the world? Have you said or done things that you feared had lost you the respect of some one whose good opinion was of priceless value to you? Have you given utterance to words that you would give years of your life to recall? If so, worse, almost, than anything else, is the fact that you have lost your own self-respect. What is more undignified, more ridiculous than one who has lost control of himself and is saying and doing things to-day of which he will bitterly repent to-morrow? Remember that nothing can more easily cost you the respect of others than a display of temper. Thereafter you are marked as one who lacks balance, dignity, power.
"If wishing could bring them back, If wishing could bring them back-- The wrathful words that flew away To mar the joy of another's day-- If wishing could bring them back!"