Seneca on True and False Friendship 3

. . . Speak as boldly with him as with yourself. As to yourself, although you should live in such a way that you trust your own self with nothing which you could not entrust even to your enemy, yet, since certain matters occur which convention keeps secret, you should share with a friend at least all your worries and reflections.

 Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal. Some, for example, fearing to be deceived, have taught men to deceive; by their suspicions they have given their friend the right to do wrong. Why need I keep back any words in the presence of my friend?  Why should I not regard myself as alone when in his company? . . .

—Seneca the Younger, Moral Letters to Lucilius 3, tr Gummere

The joy of friendship should rightly rest in the unity that comes from trust and commitment. It is for this reason that the Ancients often spoke of the friend as a “second self”, the person with whom we can share what is closest to us, both the good and the bad.

It is perhaps because we so desire the comfort of such a bond that we become discouraged when we see it neglected and abused. We wish to practice honesty and concern, but we find that others act only with deception and selfishness.

We have already seen Seneca’s advice that we choose our friends wisely and carefully, seeking first and foremost the same sense of wisdom and virtue to which we aspire. We will all stumble and fall in our attempts at living well, but the friend will help us to do good and to avoid evil; he will not meet a wrong with another wrong.

This is a variation of the “Golden Rule”. If I wish a friend to be loyal, just, considerate, or merciful, I myself must treat him with loyalty, justice, consideration, or mercy. It seems so odd that we would say that the friend is a second self, and then harm him, as if we were somehow trying to harm ourselves.

We can perhaps understand why we would act in such a contradictory way. I may have been hurt by the rejection or neglect of another, and so I now defend myself by becoming untrusting and inconsiderate. It may seem safer to withdraw from commitment when others have failed to commit.

But then we merely compound the problem. We feel anger or sadness when we experience vice in others, and by allowing ourselves to be ruled by those feelings, we ourselves embrace vice, and thereby merely encourage it in others. The vicious cycle continues.

The Stoic need never fear the grief or resentment of loss, because he knows that his happiness rests in how well he lives, in what he gives, and not simply in what he receives. He breaks the cycle of broken friendship simply by practicing being a friend himself.

Written in 7/2009

Image: Giotto, The Kiss of Judas (c. 1305)