Tony and Barbara Holden – friendship
It must be devastatingly grim to feel you have no one who cares for you. At the other extreme, whilst most of us engage with a wide range of people, there are people we regard as friends, or close friends, or even ‘best friends.’ Such are of high value, set within the context of family and loved ones.
We got into writing about friendship when looking up an anthology ‘celebrating friendship’ by Brian Frost and Pauline Webb. They wrote in 1986:
“Friendship is difficult to define, but we have found echoes of it in aphorisms drawn from many different cultures. It is a gift to be celebrated in song and story and enjoyed in shared hospitality. It has its demanding side too, as the sections on the candour and conflict possible in friendship illustrate. It is personified in people from many different walks of life, portrayed in cameos depicted by their friends. Above all, friendship has the divine imprint upon it, and in shared faith develops a profound and everlasting quality.”
This reminded us of words by Cicero. Translated from the Latin stone inscription it reads: “The best and most beautiful support of life is friendship." [Eric Gill 1918 Courtauld Art Gallery London].
For us friendship is about people who, whatever our cultural or political differences, share our core values. As Barbara puts it: “Identity is a very flexible thing. When I was quite young, I had a sense of wanting to be with people who tried to be in the present – live in the present - and who, nonetheless, were committed to the future.” Both present and future are about [as we put it]: “Kindness and compassion / Non-violence and truth-telling / Justice and peace / Yes, that is right.”
And friendship is also, supremely, about people with whom we “feel at home.” People who, given all the myriad options and choices, continue to find time for us. People we miss years after they have died (with a sense of loss). And lastly, friendship at its most intense and lasting is with we our chosen-partner.
Comments