Not, however, for the purpose mentioned by Epicurus in the letter quoted above: "That there may be someone to sit by him when he is ill, to help him when he is in prison or in want;" but that he may have someone by whose sickbed he himself may sit, someone a prisoner in hostile hands whom he himself may set free.
He who regards himself only, and enters upon friendships for this reason, reckons wrongly. The end will be like the beginning: he has made friends with one who might assist him out of bondage; at the first rattle of the chain such a friend will desert him.
These are the so-called "fair-weather" friendships; one who is chosen for the sake of utility will be satisfactory only so long as he is useful. Hence prosperous men are blockaded by troops of friends; but those who have failed stand amid vast loneliness, their friends fleeing from the very crisis which is to test their worth.
Hence, also, we notice those many shameful cases of persons who, through fear, desert or betray. The beginning and the end cannot but harmonize. He who begins to be your friend because it pays will also cease because it pays. A man will be attracted by some reward offered in exchange for his friendship, if he be attracted by anything in friendship other than friendship itself.
Friendship will indeed be a manifestation of self-sufficiency, if only I remember that it is something that begins from the inside out, not from the outside in. Many will say that they need friends to fill up the emptiness inside of them, but the Stoic desires friends to share something of his own fullness.
Or put another way, there is a difference between thinking that friends will make me happy, and that being happy will help me to love my friends. As is so often the case, I reverse the cause and the consequence.
A great beauty of true friendship will then be in its mutual character, where two become one by means of a complete self-giving. If my aim is to look out for another, and his aim is to look out for me, we both suddenly find that we have now multiplied our benefits, broadening our common opportunities to practice understanding and compassion.
The illusion of a conflict between “mine” and “yours” falls away when there ceases to be any calculation about receiving, and only a commitment to giving remains. The focus must be on what I can do, not on what is done to me.
As a gritty old fellow once told me, “If I watch your back, and you watch mine, then everything is in front of us.”
Accordingly, while there was earlier an agreement between the Stoics and the Epicureans that a wise man would seek out friends, there will now sadly be a separation on why he should seek out friends. The motive will distinguish the taker from the giver, such that wanting to be cared for stands apart from wanting to offer care.
Such a divergence can only be expected, where there is such a contrast between the Epicurean goal of pleasure as the highest human good, and the Stoic goal of virtue as the highest human good. This is why making sense of such first principles is so crucial, and hardly just a matter of intellectual noodling. As our priorities go, so go the most practical aspects of our lives.
The hardest, and the most important, lesson I ever had to learn was that someone who only looked out for her own profit and gratification could never be my friend. As painful as that process was, I slowly had to overcome the tendency to cast any blame outwards, and finally take on a responsibility for myself. Other will choose their own paths, while I must choose mine; acceptance must trump resentment.
A misguided commitment will end as poorly as it began, as a form of bargaining and not a commitment at all. I will believe that a convenient circumstance has sealed the bond, only to find that an inconvenient circumstance now breaks it. This is why we can always tell our friends from the parasites when the situation is no longer as satisfying.
“Fair-weather” friends indeed! Now how can I upgrade myself to being an “all-weather” friend?
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