Seneca on True and False Friendship 5

. . . In like manner you should rebuke these two kinds of men—both those who always lack repose, and those who are always in repose. For love of bustle is not industry—it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind. 

And true repose does not consist in condemning all motion as merely vexation; that kind of repose is slackness and inertia.  Therefore, you should note the following saying, taken from my reading in Pomponius: "Some men shrink into dark corners, to such a degree that they see darkly by day."

 No, men should combine these tendencies, and he who reposes should act and be who acts should take repose.  Discuss the problem with Nature; she will tell you that she has created both day and night.  Farewell.

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

Similarly, we have the sort of people who feel the need to be in constant action, always busy doing and achieving, as well as the sort of people who don’t ever do much of anything at all. Much as we are tempted to do with trust, so we are also tempted to do with action, pursuing far too much or far too little.

I note that neither sort of person is capable of being a true friend, because we have lost a sense of the balance between ourselves and others.

My own temptation has usually tended toward the latter, though I wonder if that is because I am reacting to my experiences of the former.

I have a vivid memory from childhood. I was attending a new school, and I felt the urge to find friendship and companionship. A fellow who seemed very bright and charming didn’t seem to mind me tagging along after him, so that’s exactly what I did. He shared many of his own thoughts with me, and seemed to encourage me to express my own.

Something frightening happened one day, and I can never claim to have really understood why. Perhaps he was making himself feel better by putting me in my place. He was telling one of his jokes, and I laughed with him. Suddenly, his expression became very serious, and he insulted the way I laughed. He then went on to give a long litany of all the many ways I was, as he called it, a loser.

Needless to say, that hurt me very deeply. I crawled into myself, interested neither in doing anything nor in trusting anyone. In different way and at different times, similar things have happened, and I have always had the same instinct to hide away. I felt, over and over again, that I had, as they say, put myself out there, only then to be cut down.

It took thought, and not just feeling, to begin to recognize what I was doing to myself over the years. It seemed that I wanted to love and to live well, but the world also appeared to be telling me that I couldn’t do that.

It is deeply frightening and disturbing, for example, when someone has said that you will be a best friend for all of time, and now will not acknowledge you or give you the time of day. Then you recognize there was no love there at all.

Nature was rather asking me to learn to distinguish about what it meant to love, and what it meant to live well. She had been telling me all along that what mattered was who I loved, and why I acted. I can only be a friend when I have figured that out. 

Written in 7/2009

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