Friend?

"Do you know what friendship is?", enquired Gringoire in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'. "Yes replied the Egyptain (Esmeralda) it is to be as brother and sister, two souls which touch each other without uniting like two fingers of the same hand."

What is a friend?

Shared experiences do not a friend make. Acquaintances are not friends. Common experiences do not a friend make. Having pleasurable, exciting, or agreeable things to offer does not a friend make. A friend is someone that makes the time to care. It is a person that holds the interests of the other as valuable as their own. It is someone who steps out of them self for another. Esmeralda spoke correctly when she said, "it is to be as brother and sister", brother and brother, sister and sister. "Two fingers of the same hand", "which touch each other without uniting". Friendship is to have comrades, companions, through life. Friends do not come and go, those that are ecdysial were never friendships, merely embellished associations. A civil face, the empty kind word, the proper friendly deed, sacrifices without the soul's sincere concern for the individual, merely duty to an ideal of propriety without the bonds of faithfulness, friendliness alone does not a friend make. In an age of vipers, hypocrites, guileful and calculating flatterers, apparent behaviors mean very little.

Motive and heart is where friendship is found. To hold precious the heart and soul of another, a friend can just as easily tell you how well you did, as tell you that you are wrong. Just as easily can they tell you that you are hilarious, as tell you that you are being annoying. A friend can without reservation tell you that you make them happy, as tell you that you did something that made them mad. How? A friend is couched in being real. Real to their perception, real to their feelings, real to the relationship. A friend is a brother, a sister, bound together by invisible blood that makes them relatives. Real friends are as difficult to separate as adjacent fingers. They seek each other out. They communicate. They relate. They consider. They share. Not out of obligation, not out of compulsion, but out of esteem, trust, safety of honesty, and safety of confidence. They can be real. They can be themselves without reservation. Brothers and sisters see each other in their most vulnerable of times, they are privy to the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. They have these experiences mostly due to situational proximity. Having to live together and spend so much time together, siblings more fully see the individual that makes up their brother or sister. They know their history. They know their triumphs and defeats. They can relate. They have perspective. They develop concern and care, and are committed to them. Their bond, an allegiance, dedication, and commitment to the prosperity and happiness of that individual. This heart guides and gives rise to being able to say and do even the most difficult of things to or for that individual. Friends follow suit in all these aspects. Friendship is a choice, and it is born out of love; brotherly love, sisterly love. Friendship is to be familiar, no longer a stranger but an equal; friendship thrives in trusting this cornerstone point. Remove this, and friendship is hollow. It is rote, having no life of itself, it is contrived. It is manipulative and deceptive. A machination of perception, a body without a soul. Friends value each other as the same, meaning they value the other as they do themself. Seeing others as worth-less than what they esteem as their own worth, is not friendship. Friendships based on all other reasons are also not truly friends. Friends do unto each other as they want done unto themselves.

Those that are friends, so long as the circumstances are pleasing, fair weather friends, are counterfeit. They are counterfeit friends, as well as hollow people. They are whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones. Hypocrites by definition. True friends are discovered in adversity. Friends are proven, not in fair weather, but in the storms of life. Friends are diamonds resulting of the integrity to stand against the time and pressures of life, supportively together. Value is ascribed by sacrifice not by ease. Journeying through difficulties with mutual support endear persons of gratitude together. Why? Clearly because they show, prove, the intent, motive, and heart of the person that sacrifices. It reveals the true friend, the real friend.

Fingers assist the cause of the hand. They don't abandon each other. They work side by side, assisting to add strength and stability in the endeavor, but more importantly, to each other. They do not work against each other. They do not neglect each other.

There are many people that are kindly people cloaking themselves in the gown of friendship though they are merely cordial associates. There are people that are wolves in friendly sheep's clothing. Then there are real friends, those brothers of another mother, and sisters of another mother that stand the test of time and circumstance.

Are you a friend? Do you have people that call themselves your friends? Are they trully friends? Are you?