Pals

So, there came a day long ago when someone wrote a sentence. He wrote it in a different language.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Not lovers. Not family. For his friends.

Friendship is really the highest form of human bond. I don’t mean what Facebook means by “friends.” I mean friends more the way Homer meant it, when Achilles, the greatest warrior alive among a litany of superlative warriors, sat out the greatest war of his age to mourn for Patroclus. Some quarters have tried to make out they were lovers. I contend they were friends. And friends means something really important, and strangely cheapened in this contemporary moment.

We are blessed to have real friends in this life. Mostly, we surround ourselves by acquaintances, at best. Real friends will fight for each other.

A few years ago, I had someone I considered a best friend walk out. We had political differences. Ideological differences. For my part, I’m still his friend. Still willing to be there, lay down my life, and the rest of it. It is a wound that’s never fully healed that he walked away. What it’s taught me is this: friendship is unconditional. I’m still his friend. Even if he’s absent. If he called tomorrow and needed something, I’d be there. That’s the nature of friendship.

Look at Sam and Frodo. Or Quincy Morris, John Seward and Arthur Holmwood. Look at the novels of Austen. Friendship matters, and it’s not to be overlooked or cheapened. Real friendship, real loyalty to someone else, is of more worth than all the diamonds on Earth.

Think on what we’re here for, if not each other.