Friendship: a short exegesis

Why don't we write like essays like Emerson or James anymore? Their prose sing with moral conviction, philosophical boldness, and the joie de vivre of being awake to the world, and saying something about it beyond the humble dictations of 'careful' scholars.

A topic that draws out this writing style for me is friendship. The cycles and terrains of friendship have always been a source of enthrallment; for the most part this sense of wonder has been germinating within, in potentiā. Here I shall make a little effort to unfold it.

Real friendship enacts the "goodness" of life. In the continuous unconscious tally of whether being alive is a positive or negative condition, the relationship of friendship is a powerful advocate of the former. Mutuality without expectation, one hallmark of friendship, is a primordial chord of goodness; wherefore a distinct sense of gratitude wells up for all who encounter such good will.

But lets define this principle closer, because all stunning virtues harbor a plethora of possible misconstruals. For example, 'without expectation' can easily be read as 'without judgment' or 'without sincere evaluation'. But human discernment is a faculty that is impossible to turn off in the mind and heart. Such a natural process of human relationality -- which is indispensable in the mutual construction of trust -- cannot be excluded from friendship. And so 'expectation' dwells in a semantic elsewhere. In the unique sphere of friendship, as I am framing it, judgment and evaluation arise out of genuine care for the other, not some self-serving agenda, fraught with projections and crystallizations of the potential of the other. Who would want to be a friends with someone who chooses to be blind to their interiority? Isn't friendship predicated on a mutuality that definitionally goes beyond such market-place modes of being together?

If 'without expectation' is something different than without 'sincere judgment' or 'evaluation', then what is it? In my use of the term, "mutuality without expectation" means the basic positive regard for the potential of a true friend to rise to each occasion, ultimately, and unfold the grandeur of their inherent power naturally, in dialogue with the unique, situated, lineaments of their reception and disclosure of life. Even more, friendship arises in the openness and joy of holding that space for each other. It is a pure "we" sense, unencumbered by the wearinesses that frequent familial relations or the uneasiness of subtle attachments that oft pervades romance. Friendship is intersubjective freedom. Friendship allows one to be oneself, like no other relationship, because friendship reveals that 'being oneself' is deeply connected to 'being social' -- a conviviality that uniquely captures our spontaneity.

In case these prose have a monolithic feel, it should be emphasized, without hesitation, that "friendship" is plural, polythetic; a numinous category brimming with socio-diversity, cultural idiosyncrasies, and various sub-categorical formations. This is a brief elucidation and ode to one shining strand of a catch-all term, with an emphasis on the joy of growing together in the space of inherent affection that is free of all forms of instrumentalization. This species of friendship, which I can attest to from the inspiration of numerous beings I have the honor to call friends in this sense, is the best.