A Year For Friendship

As the high school literature tutor for the daughter we have in ninth grade, I toured through selections of Aristotle's ETHICS this past week, including his thoughts on friendship.  Some snippets from Book 8:

"… without friends no one would choose to live, even though he possessed every other good."  

"Perfect friendship is the friendship of people who are good and alike in virtue; 

                for they are alike in wishing each other's good…"

"Those who wish the good of their friends for their friends' sake are in the truest sense friends."

"Friendships of this kind are likely to be rare; for such people are few."

(Aristotle: On Man In The Universe, Classics Club edition, Louse Ropes Loomis, editor).

As I pondered my New Year -- what to prioritize, what to jettison -- Aristotle brought friendship into focus.  Specifically, I began to think of those handful of people who are virtuous, who wish my good simply for my sake, who are true friends, who are gifts to my life that make it worth living:

"My friends have come to me unsought.  The great God gave them to me."   

ESSAY VI Friendship - Ralph Waldo Emerson  (http://www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm)

The question that came foremost was: Have I reciprocated?  Am I the friend that others value for the good I wish them and the love I give without reserve?  Do others see me as a gift?  Or, am I the weaker brother in constant need of stronger companions?   

No, this is not me trolling for reassurance, rather it is simply the expression of the desire I have this year to renew in myself that virtue I see in my dearest friends, so well explained in these words by the one who lived them best:

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."  

(Jesus, shortly before his crucifixion.  John chapter 15, verse 13, New International Version)