Friends and friendship

Literature is filled with paeans to friends and friendship. "The better part of one's life consists of his friendships . The best mirror is an old friend. The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with friendship. Friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it. Or as the poet Blake puts it "The bird a nest,
the spider a web,
man friendship."

Indeed, friendship is considered one of the central human experiences, and has been sanctified by all major religions. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian poem that is among the earliest known literary works in history, chronicles in great depth the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Greco-Roman had, as paramount examples, the friendship of Orestes and Pylades, and, in Virgil's Aeneid, the friendship of Euryalus and Nisus. The Abrahamic faiths have the story of David and Jonathan.

It seems that friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.

But what I was curious about was how people found their friends. And how they kept them? And here is what I found?

Most – but not all—of our friends tend to be made when we are in school or in college. This is the time when minds are open and the quaint habits of ones friends become the foundation of fond memories later on. "There is magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart “ . And this seems to hold true both for men and for women.

While it is true that a certain tie unites us all, but this tie becomes stronger from proximity. So it is that fellow-citizens are preferred in our affections to foreigners, relations to strangers; and friends to strangers. Thus it is no wonder that another source of lifetime friends is public services—the foreign Service, the railway, the military. Thrown together in remote places, camaraderie seems to develop. It seems that acute discomfort sanctified by distance and memory contributes to bonds that last. The very stability of a public sector life seems to provide fertile ground for long term relationships.

For some reason, few could recall making friends in their own work place in the private sector. Could it be that the competitiveness of modern life drains the openness and genuine affection which forms the basis of friendships? Gerard, one of those I asked, disagreed and stated that he had made a lot of friends in his work place. But when I pressed him further, he conceded that while most of his friends did work in his company, none worked in his group. They all belonged to different parts of the organization and came from completely different backgrounds and thus there were no direct competition with him.

I also found out that women tend to have more best friends than men of almost any age. My wife claims that that is due to the fact that men have no small talk or that their small talk tends to be almost fully in form of grunts when they do meet after a long time. According to her, “small talk is the lubricant of communication, and without communication, how can there be any friendship. “ Others say that friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view. Whatever the reason, most women have many friends while men can count theirs on the fingers of one hand.

Marriage seems to present another hurdle. After marriage, the husband almost always leaves the social landscape to his wife and his bachelor days friends are among the earliest to be consigned to the shadows. Unless of course, these bachelor friends marry women that the wife approves of. Children when they arrive further narrow the social group to like minded parents bolstered by family picnics and having to weather similar storms during the growing up years. Nothing, it seems, binds friendships more than sharing experiences of handling rebellious teenagers.

Friendships in the east tend to last longer and are deeper than those in the west. It is difficult to decide whether this is due to cultural differences or the absence of TV and other distractions while they were growing up. But what is true is that according to a 2006 study documented in the journal the American Sociological Review, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985. The study states 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and the average total number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two. According to this study: Americans' dependence on family as a safety net went up from 57% to 80%; their dependence on a partner or spouse went up from 5% to 9% while friendships have declined. In recent times, it seems that modern American friendships have lost the force and importance they had in antiquity. To the ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue- the modern world, in comparison, ignore it. Some observers point to homophobia being at the root of a modern decline in the western tradition of friendship. It seems that fear of being, or being seen as, homosexual has killed off western man's ability to form close friendships with other men. Many Americans often cite their fathers as their best friends but it is true that most of us find friends in our extended families more often than among outsiders.

Strangely few friendships are formed in the old age period of ones life. Philosophers have always urged us to grow gardens in the autumn of our lives but rarely have they recommended that we cultivate new friends as well?

Of course, the most difficult thing in the world is for a friendship to remain unimpaired to the end of life. So many things might intervene: conflicting interests; differences of opinion in politics; frequent changes in character, owing sometimes to misfortunes, sometimes to advancing years. But the most fatal blow to friendship in the majority of cases seems to be the lust of gold. Even in the case of the best of men, the cause for discord was often a rivalry for office and reputation. Too late we learn a man must hold his friend, unjudged, accepted and trusted to the end. “If you judge people, you have no time to love them" Says Mother Teresa.

Friends are like flowers. You need to plant the seeds early, water them often and tend them tenderly as they grow to enjoy their scent forever.