Friendship

Taken from the book "Travel Mercies" by Tan Soo-Inn.

In the twelfth century, a young monk named Aelred wrote powerfully about the life-sustaining nature of friendship:

"But what happiness, what security, what joy to have someone to whom you dare to speak on terms of equality as to another self; one to whom you need have no fear to confess your failings; one to whom you can unblushingly make known what progress you have made in the spiritual life; one to whom you can entrust all the secrets of your heart and before whom you can place all your plans! What, therefore, is more pleasant than so to unite to oneself the spirit of another and of two to form one, that no boasting is therefore to be feared, no suspicion to be dreaded, no correction of one by the other to cause pain, no praise on the part of one to bring a charge of adulation from the other. 'A friend', says the Wise man, 'is the medicine of life'."


Upon reading this, I thought of some people (friends). Then I also thought about myself. And I felt lonely. Because I don't think I really have such a friend, and realise, perhaps (most probably), maybe, I haven't been such a friend to somebody else too.