On Love and Friendship

I had written to a friend recently and after expressing some genuine heart-felt feelings in my missive, I received a phone call inquiring if I was ok and whether I was dying. After I had chuckled aloud, I explained to him that I was not going to succumb anytime soon but what I had written was sincere and honest.

Too often, we allow our friends to assume that they know we love and care for them and I think that this is a strange error to make. At some point as we age, it is important for people to know what we feel about them and not merely what we express in gestures, large or small.

But if we do not tell our friends what we feel, then how do we expect them to know? How will our friends know that the dinner in New Orleans was not only thoughtful but beautiful. Will that friend know how important it was to have his hand while one lay in the hospital, wondering about test results? Joseph Epstein's recent work on friendship fails to account for the fact that while he would never considering "sharing" with a friend because he finds it unmanly, those of us men who do not possess the same absurd notions about maleness much less masculinity, have embraced deeply our friends, regardless of their gender.

My hope is that I always have the raw courage to be frank with someone I would deem my friend. But I do not bestow that moniker easily. It is a slow process as Lord Chesterfield and Aristotle would have us believe and they are right. Rushing a relationship is pure folly and the folks who insist relationships are possible in zero to sixty have not been very honest about time or the conditions of love. Instead, they would have us think that this notion of "clicking" really works and once we have felt close, we are in fact, so.