is friendship a form of love

is friendship a form of love
is friendship a form of love
is friendship a form of love

It’s interesting that whenever we think of love, we usually first think romantic love. And then love for our family. And then… and then…
Huh. We forget that we don’t just like our friends – we LOVE our friends. Perhaps most purely of all.
I was deeply touched by a dharma talk I recently listened to. The lama spoke about cultivating lovingkindess (a quality of heart and mind that is crucial to Buddhist practice, and even to enlightenment itself). He suggested that what we clumsily translate into English as lovingkindess is most accurately what we experience as love for a friend.
Not love for your mother.
Not love for your spouse or lover.
Hmm, could love for a friend really be so important?
We love our spouses – but don’t we sometimes wish they would “just change” here and “just change” there? And wow, when it comes to family, don’t tell me that you don’t have some people that you love to pieces but still have about fifty thousand things you wish they would never do again.
But it’s our friends that we love just the way they are. They are the ones whose crazy antics and ridiculous comments that make us laugh, rather than grit our teeth.
They are the ones that tell you that you look great when you just got the worst haircut ever. Or support you when your spouse goes on the tenth business trip of the year. Or who is honestly, truly happy for you when you are successful.
Don’t get me wrong, romance and family bring exquisite joy. I’m just saying that friendships are crucially important to the nuanced joy that a well-lived life can bring us. Honestly, I think that ANY LOVE we nurture and appreciate is pure love.
Just don’t forget how important your friends are.
But enough from me. Let me share some inspirational quotes about friendship from some men and women who are much wiser than me.
“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”
― Aristotle
“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”
― Bernard meltzer
“A faithful friend is a strong defense;
And he that hath found him hath found a treasure.”
― Louisa May Alcott
“I think if I’ve learned anything about friendship, it’s to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don’t walk away, don’t be distracted, don’t be too busy or tired, don’t take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.”
― Jon Katz
“A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.”
― Lois Wyse
“The capacity for friendship is God’s way of apologizing for our families.”
― Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
― Aristotle
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
― Helen Keller
“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”
― William Shakespeare
“So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson
“Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
― Albert Camus