On Friendship

"Friendship must be about something." --C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis wrote a classical interpretation of many emotions central to human life. In his book, The Four Loves, he addresses the meaning of friendship. Drawing upon rich resources such as the ancient Greeks, Romans, traditions borne through millennia, his view may be termed as western, if not universal.

Lewis delineates the many views of friendship; he describes it as mutuality, as 'seeing the same truth, looking outward, much as French writer, St. Exupery does; he explores friends in the context of erotic love; the search for Beauty, the engagement of spirituality, companionship, and he asserts that it's the least jealous of all the loves.

Where Lovers seek privacy, friends experience enclosure between themselves and the 'herd' rushing around them, and they may not be jealous so are often willing to admit another into their circle.
The American poet Emerson posed the question of a friend several times, simply asking, 'do you care about the same truths as I do?' The answer to this is the point at which a companion may move to a friend.
Shared activities and insights may be a draw for companions who 'share the road.' But a deeper, inner sense recognizing certain truths brings them into the realm of friend.

And while friends may not fully draw the same conclusions, they generally agree on the importance of questions. Seeing the shape of the world in similar fashion draws them to similar questions, if not responses.

Further Lewis argues simple friendship is entirely free of the need to be needed. He writes, "in a circle of true friends, each is simply what he is: stands for nothing but ones' self."

While Eros seeks out naked bodies, friendship seeks naked personalities. There is no absolute duty to friend anyone, nor is there a legal contract such as marriage. 

Friendship comes freely, entirely unencumbered with these other types of strictures.
Yet in modern, industrialized societies friendship is so often undervalued in favor of contractualized relationships as if these are somehow inherently better, more legitimate.
One cannot fail to notice the number and degree of divorces that abound in any given community.

Friends form moreover an appreciation of each other. They not only travel the same roads but their values within the realm of truths inform their judgement, leaving them more clear-eyed about one another.
They are observant of a mutual love and knowledge, and this forms itself into an appreciation a sentiment that often leaves one feeling in his deepest heart, humbled, what is he among those seemingly better, how lucky to be.
And when together among these friends, there is the knowledge that each brings out as if by magic the better in one self, the best, the funniest, the most clever, the beauty. In the conversation, the mind opens to something more, a perception of the self previously unknown comes into view. Life has no better gift to give than a good friend or two.

Knowledge, Commitment and Freedom

"Only true knowledge of a person makes it possible to commit one's freedom to the other."
--Karol Wojtyla

"Love," says Christian theologian, Wojtyla, 'consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom-- it is a "giving" of the self... to limit one's freedom on behalf of another. Limitation might seem to be something negative or unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing."

If this freedom is not engaged by the will, it becomes negative, and gives to human feeling, a sense of emptiness and unfulfilment. Yet love commits to freedom and " imbues it with that to which the will is naturally attracted-- the element of goodness. Thus the will then aspires to the good; freedom is the providence of the will, existing for and because of love; it is the way of love in which human beings share most fully in the good. "Human freedom then is one of the highest in the moral order of things," says Wojtyla. This order encompasses the spectrum of man's longings and desires; his growing pathways of awareness of the life in the spirit. But man longs for love more than he longs for freedom. In choosing, there is an affirmation of value in response to natural, sense perceptions, to sentiment. "Sexual values [as an expression of the appetite] tend to impose themselves," regardless of the choosing of the possible values of a whole person.

For this reason, a man, especially, one who has not succumbed to mere passion, but preserves his interior innocence, usually finds himself in the arena of struggle between the sexual instinct and a need for freedom, or liberty to do as he otherwise wishes. This natural instinct, this drive of Eros cannot be underestimated; it is a powerful, yet limited drive. Eros can, and often lays siege to the will itself, clouding the other values with sensual intensity. Through a perception of sentiment, however, the will may be freed of the vice-like hold of a conscious, lusting desire, of a consumer view; rather it is transformed by sentiment, and the action of the will to a longing for a person of the other sex, for a possibility of wholeness.

It is love, finally, when the will enters into the equation, providing a conscious commitment of one's freedom in respect to another person, in recognition and affirmation, providing a creative contribution of the love that develops between the persons. Thus love is between persons, existing in a space that is neither one or the other, is created, and not possessed. So then in love, in freedom, there is a conscious will for another person's good, an unqualified good, a good unlimited, that is a person's happiness.

"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction. " -Antoine de St. Exupery

We desire moreover to make the beloved happy, to please them and see to their good. It is this precisely that makes possible for a person to be re-born in love, to become alive, aware of the riches within himself, of his creativity, his spirituality, of his fertility. The person, in love, compels belief in his own spiritual powers; it awakens the creativity and the sense of worth within the individual. And yet for all its lofty abundance, human lovers must learn to translate their highest impulses into the everyday world.