What is the greatest pleasure?
When I was younger, I might have said being in love, eating chocolate, a quiet afternoon with nothing to do but read or walk my dog, or a day trip to Carmel.
I still love all of those things.
But now, after years of weathering the ups and downs of life, I might say a meeting of the minds.
The greatest sorrow of my life has been parting ways with people I love because we disagree over the fundamentals of life. I am not referring to a legitimate range of opinion when it comes to religion, politics, artistic taste, and lifestyles. However, beneath the contrasts that make any relationship vibrant, there must be an underlying mystery of truth, goodness, and beauty, that all parties are committed to in their varied ways.
In the classical tradition, I believe that truth, goodness, and beauty are real and objective things. I don't fully understand them, and that's why I'm interested in talking to you. You don't fully understand them, and that's why I hope you are interested in talking to me. Collectively, I hope we bring together the best of our diverse ideas in a wise synthesis. Hopefully, this capacitates us to build happier families and communities, renew our social structures, rescue our environment, and improve the quality of our civilization.
This meeting of the minds is friendship.
In friendship, we step into a shared space of desiring the same things. In desiring the same things, we have a shared vision. I imagine Dante's Paradiso, with all the saints an angels sharing in the vision of God. In that shared vision, their hearts and minds are in sync. This seeing is not about biological vision. It is about seeing and possessing with the heart. Because we are not created to function in solitude, our joy is not complete until the seeing and possession of what we love is a mutual, shared experience.
I like to imagine that every time I chat with a friend, we step into Dante's Paradiso. Together, in the shared moment of talking about matters great and small, in our shared journey towards the true, good, and beautiful, we mutually possess what is most dear to our hearts. In knowing that you see what I love, my possession of that thing because more sure. In you knowing that I see what you love, your possession of that thing becomes more sure. In the mutual back and forth of a shared vision, our seeing and possession are amplified and made real.
Such is the joy of friendship.
At a certain point in life, we all have to grow up. We must begin to see a greater vision of life and move towards it, otherwise we will die intellectually and spiritually. With time we will understand that this journey is the great struggle of our life. We will realize how deeply we need others to help us articulate our vision and pursue it. We will understand how miserable we are pursuing this vision on our own. Indeed, we will find that we can't do it on our own. Other pleasures will not exactly fall by the wayside, but they will be demoted in the hierarchy of goods. Friendship will ascend ever higher in our estimation of what is most valuable.
Is it possible that the value of friendship is an index of personal development?
If we define personal development as awakening to the great ideas of life and maturing in our ability to share in them in union with others, then yes, most definitely. We can say that the value of friendship is an index of personal development. The more we value friendship, the more mature we have become.
Our culture will try to sell us short when it comes to friendship. Friendship is merely about "having fun" with others, or that it is merely about belonging to a group or being around other bodies. Or, far worse, it is an ego-based attempt at conquering and maintaining connections that make us feel important and powerful. All of these ideas of friendship fall so far short of what it actually is: mutual accompaniment in the shared pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.
But then perhaps that's because we have abandoned our commitment to truth, goodness, and beauty. Perhaps our collective focus has shifted to other things: sex, food, a big house, looking good, and being impressive. Being comfortable for the sake of being comfortable. Being important for the sake of being important.
Hopefully we are striving for more from life than those things. But sadly, we will lose friends along the way when and if they choose to build their lives around those things. There will come a point when we must part ways because the meeting of the minds (and wills) is lost. And though it is not what we want, the friendship falls by the wayside. The loss can not be helped because friendship is having a shared teleology.
There may come a time when we lose so many friends that we start paying attention. All is not well. There are competing visions of life and the best one doesn't always win out. Perhaps some friends will return once they experience the disillusionment of other life paths. Others may not. But we treasure those who join with us in common cause. We fight for those friends. Other good things become less and less important. When all has been stripped away: youth, success, wealth, popularity. What will remain? What will we prize above all? Our friends.
And, when this life ends. May we step into Dante's Paradiso. With our friends.
