Seneca, Moral Letters 3.1

Letter 3: On true and false friendship

You have sent a letter to me through the hand of a "friend" of yours, as you call him. And in your very next sentence you warn me not to discuss with him all the matters that concern you, saying that even you yourself are not accustomed to do this; in other words, you have in the same letter affirmed and denied that he is your friend.

 

Of all the missteps I have made over the years, the one that brought me the most pain was probably my poor choice of friends. I made commitments to all of the wrong people, precisely because I wanted to feel comforted and appreciated, even as I did not understand what actual friendship was to begin with. 

 

I notice that I still instinctively speak of the “wrong” people, and yet that is another hangover from my earlier confusion. They chose, entirely on their own terms, to be who they wanted to be, and the only thing wrong was my assumption that they would magically become something that they were not. 

 

I now begin to discern within myself that classic error every Stoic warned me about, of expecting happiness to be something that was given to me by others. By making love about the blind receiving instead of the conscious giving, I was digging my own grave. 

 

There were, for example, hundreds, probably even thousands, of girls at my college who were very much like the one I desperately miss to this very day. I don’t long for them, of course, because I never made the choice to love them without condition, and to tie my own worth to their estimation. It was my thinking that was the root of my problem.

 

When Lucilius speaks about his supposed friend, and yet also warns Seneca not to share any of his personal matters with him, I both nod my head and grit my teeth. That young man, much like this young man, used a term far too loosely, and actually employed it in a contradictory manner. 

 

If he is a friend, trust him with all that you have. If he is not a friend, treat him with the decency you would treat any stranger, but do not expect a bond of trust where none is present. Wherever there are conditions or reservations attached, it is not love or friendship at all. Convenience or pleasure are never bonds, because they come and go due to the whims of circumstance, instead of being forged by the judgments of character. 

 

It always made me deeply uncomfortable when people put on a smiling face, and clinked glasses together, and slapped one another on the back for being such good buddies. Only moments later, as soon as heads were turned, they would whisper gossip and slander. 

 

Was I not working hard enough to make them like me? To even suspect that was exactly the reason I did not understand. They weren’t friends, or even people who had my best interests at heart. 

 

I would feel hurt, and get angry at them, when I only needed to correct myself. 

Written in 2/2012