Seneca, Moral Letters 9.3

If you ask how one can make oneself a friend quickly, I will tell you, provided we are agreed that I may pay my debt at once and square the account, so far as this letter is concerned. Hecato says: "I can show you a potion, compounded without drugs, herbs, or any witch's incantation: 'If you would be loved, love.'" 

 

Now there is great pleasure, not only in maintaining old and established friendships, but also in beginning and acquiring new ones. There is the same difference between winning a new friend and having already won him, as there is between the farmer who sows and the farmer who reaps. 

 

The philosopher Attalus used to say: "It is more pleasant to make than to keep a friend, as it is more pleasant to the artist to paint than to have finished painting." When one is busy and absorbed in one's work, the very absorption affords great delight; but when one has withdrawn one's hand from the completed masterpiece, the pleasure is not so keen. 

 

Henceforth it is the fruits of his art that he enjoys; it was the art itself that he enjoyed while he was painting. In the case of our children, their young manhood yields the more abundant fruits, but their infancy was sweeter.

 

I suppose I am what they call an introvert, someone who may well like people very much, but who also quickly loses mental and emotional energy when in company. I need to make an extra effort in a conversation, and so making friends has never been easy; it seems the harder I try, the more difficult it becomes. 

 

And then someone very wise gave me an excellent bit of advice: stop struggling so much to make someone your friend, and just be one yourself. It is precisely as Hecato said, exactly as the Stoics have always preached: practice being good, expecting nothing else, and then you find that you will receive everything you need. 

 

I may object, that this all sounds wonderful, but am I supposed to honestly think that people will suddenly respect me once I respect them? 

 

No, not at all. Many will still lie to me, steal from me, or abandon me, but they are not the ones who are even capable of being friends from their end. If I choose to act with character, then others who follow wisdom and virtue will recognize who I am, and I will have their trust, as they have mine. They are the only ones whose opinions should matter in my estimation. 

 

We are quite busy in trying to win new friends, and quite lazy in keeping them, but I suppose this is because of what Seneca describes, how there is often more excitement and passion in the former than in the latter. This appeals to souls that are moved by a craving for something new instead of being at peace with something timeless, those who are slaves to immediate gratification instead of masters of their own judgments. 

 

If my intentions in offering friendship are sincere and pure, then it will not even occur to me that gaining it does not also necessitate nurturing it. Like the shallow people who go from one sexual conquest to another, selfish people have their so-called friends come and go. They do not understand that the thrill of the chase will give way to a much deeper commitment, the joy of constancy. 

 

The sort of love that matters, where the giving is itself the reward, is at the root of a friendship that is completely unconditional. There is nothing to stand in the way of its continuation, because there are no terms or balance sheets attached. 

 

My own children are still young, so I am still in the midst of that fiery and dramatic stage of helping to form them, and yet I always do so in the hope that they will one day be willing to give of themselves without hesitation. That will have made it all worthwhile, the lasting results of the labor. 

Written in 5/2012

IMAGE: Joshua Reynolds, Allegory of Friendship (1760)