Seneca, Moral Letters 6.2

I therefore wish to impart to you this sudden change in myself; I should then begin to place a surer trust in our friendship—the true friendship which hope and fear and self-interest cannot sever, the friendship in which and for the sake of which men meet death.

 

I can show you many who have lacked, not a friend, but a friendship; this, however, cannot possibly happen when souls are drawn together by identical inclinations into an alliance of honorable desires. And why can it not happen? Because in such cases men know that they have all things in common, especially their troubles.

 

Some may think that the self-reliance of Stoicism precludes any need for friendship, and yet I have found that quite the opposite is the case, that becoming better within oneself is precisely what can make it possible to share what is good with others. It is in this way that one’s own nature grows in harmony with the nature of one’s fellows. 

 

Wicked people never make for good friends, because they do not understand what it means to love without condition. There are many human qualities we may find attractive, but it is only the common presence of virtue that can form a lasting bond between souls, not subject to any shifting circumstances. No suffering will break it, not even the threat of death. 

 

Yes, true friends will share all the unpleasant things along with the pleasant, all the burdens together with the blessings, such that they become twin pillars of support for one another, through the thick and the thin. 

 

We call many people friends, though sadly we do not often enough form friendships with them. Perhaps it is the hopeless romantic in me, but I have always thought that marriage should be the most perfect expression of this unity, and so I found myself rather surprised to see so many people treat it as a mere mercenary alliance of pleasure and utility. 

 

Even as it is an old and hackneyed phrase, there is still truth to the saying that it is impossible to truly love another if I cannot truly love myself, and I might further add that it is impossible to truly love myself without the guidance of a moral compass. If love means desiring and doing what is good, this first requires a sense of right and wrong. Through all the differences we might have, an informed conscience will be the one common denominator for human solidarity. 

 

I can, and most certainly do, love many people who do not share my values; it is a part of the challenge of love, indeed one of its most difficult parts, to be compassionate and forgiving of what I believe to be in error. 

 

That love becomes mutual, however, when there is a unity of understanding about the things that really matter in life, behind all the particular accidents and preferences. We can carry one another when we know that we are joined in the purpose of character. 

Written in 3/2012