Ambition and Friendship

 I've found that most people don't know what friendship is. Even Thoreau or Emerson give wise sounding descriptions of their experiences of friendship. The only accurate description of friendship is by Emerson really, with some of the truth hinted in Thoreau. "Unhand me! I will be dependent no more! Ah but don't you see that we will meet on a higher plane and belong to each other because we belong more to ourselves!" 

That's the hope of friendship. But the sad fact is one might end up independent and the other degraded and depressed. One might be completely free and the other in an unhappy marriage. One might ask for help but the other one unable to give when the other needed help. To destroy ones self is only to add one more body to the wreckage, even if that other body is a dear friend. 

For all the wonderful celebration of friendship, a cold eye is often missing in these praises of friendship. 

What a person lacks is what one tends to praise. Thoreau and Emerson were the nature wanderers who desperately missed companions and good company to spend time with. At the time it might have escaped their notice that a friend is an inevitable meeting. The forest and the trees and tranquility protects me from the corrupting demands and needs of friends and family. Fear is just the impulse to be enslaved and I have to distance myself from that feeling no matter who it comes from, whether friend or foe. 

If you let fear guide you, then you're nobody's friend. Survival is of paramount importance, but friendship is an accident of entropy and nature that simply reminds me how beautiful a companion is. 

Even fear can help a person survive a little while. So survival isn't the most important thing. Friendship is an accident of nature that can't be looked for, so it isn't the true muse of existence. Perhaps the energy of a woman is the closest thing to a true friend, who guides and nurtures me in her best form whether she's capable of companionship or not. But her love is an accident of nature. I choose to nurture that love because I'm wise and because her presence is inescapable. A vague reminder that if I don't live a loving and melodious life then true slavery would find me. 

 

I pay my dues to friendship so that life can be the best and most enjoyable experience possible. 

If I choose to make myself miserable for the sake of company I just added one more frown to the sea of frowns without adding one true essence of satisfaction to that craving of companionship.

Perhaps the best description of friendship is the craving for companions. I'm an island. If I don't bring my best I'll only find the worst in others. 

The unspoken definition of friendship for some seems to just be passive acceptance of misery and hopelessness with a mix of quid quo pro to lessen the misery.

That's not friendship. 

Friendship is the missing piece that purifies and cleanses my spirit. I crave the best in my friends. 

I may consider some to be my friends even if they're not mine. I've seen their best and grieve when they settled for their worst. I can't make a person prefer freedom to slavery. The truth is that freedom is hard, slavery is harder. 

There is no easy middle road. There just isn't. People out of tiredness and pain want there to be something easier, but there just isn't, until easy is earned. 

I make my life as easy as possible. Sometimes my life is easy, and sometimes it's been painful. 

If I'm a friend of nature I can't define it by companionship. All the beauty and flowers and presence is already in the earth anyway. Gifts are wasted on the earth. It would be like walking up to the Louvre and announcing that they were finally giving them the Mona Lisa. They would kindly respond that if I wanted to view the painting I could, but I couldn't give them what's already theirs. 

I can celebrate my love for the poetry of Sylvia Plath, but I can't claim ownership of her poetry. She earned that by her courage. I can't claim ownership of her companionship. She has that write by the quality of her feet and wisdom, or lack thereof. 

I can celebrate her best self by the way I write and the way I live my life, by being the best version of her that I see in myself in my normal everyday life. 

That example might inspire her. It might sometimes shame her. It might uplift her. It might be a bucket of cold water. 

But it would never claim her. 

I ambitiously live up to the best possible version of people I admire to live the best quality of life possible that makes life enjoyable for me. 

That's friendship. That's why I partially reject Emerson's definition of friendship as getting somewhere. I'm only me where I'm at no matter where I choose to sit or walk. That type of fall or rise isn't a decision. Acceptance is a decision, but not the choice to fall or rise. That's just the fact of life. 

I'd rather just live a stable life with predictable income, moments with nature that I can cherish and companionship that I can honestly adore.

That's the life I want. 

All that other stuff is just a vague description of an outline that I can't be. Because I can only be me. 

The reason why friendship can't be a creed or a positive ideal is because as soon as it's demanded, then you have no friends.

Perhaps a slave is best described as someone who'd rather be feared than loved, because as a friend of nature i wouldn't try to twist nature into being something she's not.