Rediscovering the art of friendship

THANKS to God, we always want to make friends wherever we are. It’s written in our nature, in our heart, in our DNA. Just look at kids and see how spontaneously they make friends. Even in casual encounters, even without knowing the names, they just play and make friends.

I always get this heartwarming verification whenever I travel. In airports, piers, planes and boats, when the little boys and girls are around, it would not be long before they would be running around in carefree abandon, pure joy glowing on their faces and friendship clearly established.

I’m sure traces of this desire to make friends still linger in our hearts, perhaps dormant but ever ready to wake up once the opportunity comes. And this is because in the end we are relational by nature. We can’t help it but make friends.

We need to take care of this human need, developing it to maturity, for what is automatic and simple to children is deliberated and complex to us, the adults. We need to give special attention to it these days, because I feel that there are conditions these days that undermine our tendency to make friends.

I get the impression that in spite of the spreading social network services offered in the Internet, like the Facebook and Twitter, we can have thousands of contacts, but ironically hardly any one whom we can call a real friend. They have all been reduced to virtual friends, courtesy of the e-friendship system.

In fairness, the Internet offers indescribable marvels and amenities. But if friendship gets restricted in that level, the way to true friendship is aborted. We can get contented with that kind of relationship, and that’s a problem.

This, of course, should not come to us as a surprise. We have weaknesses, there are difficulties and temptations around us, all of which contribute to distort the real nature, meaning and purpose of friendship. We need to be wary of these realities, and try to do something about them.

We can pervert friendship for some ulterior motives and hidden agendas. We can use it to extract advantages from others. Or we can simply resort to it for purely personal, shallow and even selfish reasons. We can reverse the natural trajectory of friendship, from oneself to another, to from another to oneself.

We have to rediscover the authentic face of friendship. As social beings, we can never be alone, we need others. In fact, we have to be open to the ideal of being friends with everyone. Friendship, by nature, is universal in scope.

Even our enemies, in a certain sense, should be our friends, because Christ himself told us to love our enemies. “If you love them that love you, what reward shall you have?” he said. “Do not publicans do that…Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mt 5,46-48)

We need to polish always our skills of making friends, starting with those details that foster closeness—greeting, smiling, spending time together, saying some nice, positive words—to the more demanding ones—flexibility to different types of characters and situations, dominating our bad humor, etc.

The warmth and glow proper of friendship should be readily seen and felt. It need not be showy, of course. But by and large, there is kind of heightening of feelings and desire involved in it.

We have to know how to enter into meaningful dialogue especially when certain issues divide us. Each one should try to understand the other, listening to their reasons of the other, trying to see things the way the other sees them.

As persons and children of God, our friendship should go all the way to the spiritual and supernatural level. It has to go beyond, but never discard, the natural or human level. Friendship has to develop into apostolate, far beyond the dynamics of blood or social relations.

Therefore, we should train ourselves to fill our minds and hearts with the concerns of others. We should not remain only in the level of intentions, ideas, plans, projects, etc. Everything has to be oriented to our friends. In a way, we live for them. The basic attitude is to want to serve them.

We develop this friendship using both human and supernatural means. Friendship has to be based on faith and love for God. It should begin and end in God. Of course, given our human condition, this ideal will be reached in stages, with a lot of drama. But in the end, God is the seed and fruit of friendship.