Friendship. This is an extremely interesting topic, isn’t it? They say that you can judge a man by the quality of his friends. And, of course, there is the belief that I must be my own best friend, for sure. And this I believe.

I think we all believe this. But that being said, we do need friends. And as we begin life, we have chums when we’re quite young, people that we play with, we really enjoy. But these friendships have a tendency to fall away, don’t they, after a period of time? Perhaps when we graduate from high school, we normally don’t see these friends again.

Aristotle, for 1, he says that friendships are actually reciprocal. If we wanna build a friendship, we have to really try to understand the other human being. And he says additionally, that there are 3 types of friendships. The one could be called the utility based friendship. This is a friend, perhaps the business friend if you will, reciprocal.

You do something for me and I do something for you. You’re kind to me and I’m kind to you. Then of course, we have the pleasure friendship. Perhaps, the person we go to the gym with, that we go for a jog with, that we go to a bar with, or we go out for an evening with. And then, ultimately, we have the character based friend.

These are friends that we have, if we’re fortunate, for a lifetime And we learn from these friends and through these friendships. I’m fortunate to have several of these friends. And the one friend that sticks in my mind so often is a friend I’ve had for over 50 years. And his name is Stanislav Kosch. He’s Polish.

I met him when I was going to school in Paris over 50 years ago. And we’re still friends, I think because we’re similar people. We’re both curious about the world, we like to travel, we like to experience new ideas, new thoughts. Our friendship is so old that I knew him before he was even married and now he has 4 children. And he knew me before I was married with my 2 children.

So we go back a very, very long time. They say that if you have a good friend or friends for a long period of time, you’re very very fortunate. My grandfather, who died when I was 15 years old, had a friend by the name of Dick. Now my grandfather was a maritime man. He was a sea captain, traveled all over the world, and he often spoke about this friend of his, Dick.

They were mates. They’d sailed together forever, it seemed. And after my grandfather passed away, Dick wrote me numerous letters pleading with me to write him back, to state how I was doing, how my life was unfolding, and perhaps youth, perhaps ignorance. Many excuses could be brought forward today, but I never wrote him back, not even once. Not once.

Now I wrote about Dick in my second book, Grandfather is Dead, because Dick made an impression on me, and that is that we should cherish our friendships. Now you think to yourself, friends actually allow you to break down the solipsistic wall. And yes, it’s true that we must be friends with ourselves first, of course. But friends are even closer than your own siblings, your brothers and sister, in my case. Now, in another way, if you’re fortunate, which I also am, you know, your siblings also become your friends.

And this is a wonderful thing, friendship, most assuredly. It allows us to grow and I think really to digress for a moment that if we actually had more friends, we were more friends with each other, perhaps we would finally begin to gain control of this concept of war and realize that it is actually very, very pointless. It’s going to take us absolutely nowhere. Now, you think to yourself that criminals, for instance, have bad friends and homeless people also must have bad friends because, obviously, if you’ve ended up in a situation, whatever it is, and you’re like your friend, then you can’t grow because your friend should be better than you, I think. And you learn from your friend.

He pulls you forward. He allows you to become a better man, a better woman in this world. Therefore, the next time you wanna grow, think of your good friends, write to them, talk to them, appreciate them, love them. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary. It’s necessary to grow, to develop your friendships, and, of course, critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.

The value of friendship