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August 20, 2009

TRUTH & BEAUTY: A FRIENDSHIP



We have a very thin understanding of what friendship really is. Others have idea that friendship is a matter of choice. While according to Aristotle, the traditional idea of friendship has three components:”Friends must enjoy each other's company, they must be useful to one another, and they must share a common commitment to the good.” But for me, my own definition of what friendship really means is that it is a kind of a virtue that it is also most necessary for living. Nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things. Some hold that it is a matter of similarity that our friends are those who are like ourselves.


Saint-Exupery’s tale is filled with characters who either should be or have been tamed. The fox explains that “taming” means “creating ties” with another person so that two people become more special to one another. He said that the meaning of the world around him will be enriched because the Little Prince has tamed him. These ties are created because taming requires patience, sacrifice, understanding, perseverance and responsibility. When these virtues are put into practice for the sake of the friendship then there will be bond among them by means of sacrifice. Because if there will be no sacrifice lies and therefore no ties created. And this sacrifice is the language of love and not by words for words are “the source of misunderstanding” as the Little Prince learns from his own experience with the flower. In fact, the process of taming is usually depicted as being more intensive for the one doing the taming than for the person being tamed. And once you had tamed each other, he will be unique and one of its kind from among all the other for there was ties that established so therefore he will be treated as special.


Building friendships really takes time and to gain this state of friendship, certain things had to happen to us. We had to want to have it, we were willing to work at it and we had to learn by trial and error. If we put these together, does it not mean that actually we have been tamed by someone? We must made an effort, and been more changed. In this we learn to love the other person for their own sake not just for what they are or what they can offer, and we put the interests of the other before our own. And finally, to carry this idea one step further-in our relationship with God, do we not need to work at taming ourselves before we are ready for His ever available help and friendship?

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