Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

A friend recently suggested to my wife that I post blogs regularly or risk losing readership. His advice is sound. Three blogs have been researched and roughly drafted. My thoughts, however, have been with mi amiga de combate. We have been friends since 1989, when we bonded over Mariachi music. During our conversation, we discovered we were in the same graduate studies program.  We refer to ourselves as combat friends because of our shared enemy, cancer. She, along with my wife, has been a constant through my surgeries and hospitalizations for treatments to address other issues, including cancer, and I for her through other illnesses, the deaths of her parents and sister. “A friend is devoted at all times.; A brother (sister) is born to share adversity.” (Proverbs 17.7). On Friday the 14^th, she underwent a major surgery (her second round as the cancer had spread). As I write this, my friend, who is more of a sister, is in radiology for a CT to determine the cause of complications following the surgery. She resides in California. Besides texting daily, we have a weekly three-hour telephone conversation on Fridays. This morning I find myself thinking about friendship and what it means.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Friend as “one joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy.” It also defines it as “one who wishes (another, a cause, etc.) well, a sympathizer, favored, helper, patron or supporter.”

Cicero recounts a discourse On Friendship (De Amicitia) that he heard from the Roman lawyer Scaevola, who heard it from Laelius, who heard it from Scipio Africanus the Younger. I have found myself reflecting on this treatise composed either in 45 or 44 B.C. by Cicero. The time of the original dialogue was 129 B.C.

According to Cicero, friendship is to be before “all things human: for nothing is so comfortable to nature and nothing so adaptable to our fortunes whether they are favorable or adverse” (De Amicitia v. 17).  One aspect of friendship is goodwill towards another. Virtue is fundamental to goodwill. Cicero defines virtue as a harmony of reason: wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. These bind people together in social relationships⸺, among individuals, and societal fellowship.

The aim of friendship is happiness, which Cicero observes is our best and highest goal. Thomas Jefferson would concur. To obtain happiness is to give our attention to virtue. True friendship is created by and preserves virtue. It respects the dignity of the other in the relationship.

“… inasmuch as things human are frail and fleeting, we must be ever on the search for some persons whom we shall love and who will love us in return, for if goodwill and affection are taken away, every joy is taken from life” (De Amicitia xxvii. 103).

In the Torah, Leviticus 19:18, the portion of Kedoshim (Hebrew for “holy ones”) reads: “… you shall love your fellow as yourself.” This is echoed in the gospel of Mark 12:31: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Pirkei Avot (The Wisdom of the Fathers, a commentary on the Mishnah) contains insight into how we can understand love in the context I am using here.

“…Let the honor (respect) of your friends be as dear to you as your own.…” (Pirkei Avot 2:10). In Avot 4:10, Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua is quoted as saying: “Let the honor of your disciple be as dear to you as your own, and the honor of your friend as the respect for your teacher, and your fear of your master as fear of heaven.”

The implications of these sayings can be summed up: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, which is the basis for love and friendship. As Cicero learned from Scaevola:     

“… it is characteristic of true friendship both to give and to receive advice and, on the one hand, to give it with all the freedom of speech, but without harshness, and on the other hand to receive it patiently, but without resentment, so nothing is considered a greater bane of friendship than fawning, cajolery, or flattery; for give it as many names as you choose, it deserves to be branded as a vice peculiar to fickle and falsehearted men who say everything with a view to pleasure and nothing with a view to truth” (De Amicitia XXV. 91).

We are in a time of deepening uncertainty. Our uncertainty demands wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Uncertainty should compel us to be combat friends with respect for the dignity of one another.

La incertidumbre debe obligarnos a ser amigos de combate con respeto por la dignidad de los demás.