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Friendship essential to good health

The July 2003 issue of Psychology Today magazine had an article entitled “The Dangers of Loneliness.”

A quote in the article says, “Evidence has been growing that when our need for social relationships is not met, we fall apart mentally and even physically.”

The article goes on to say that life without friends is hardly worth living and discusses the research of a psychologist at the University of Chicago.

Apparently, he has discovered that having friends is a good thing.

Do you ever feel like “researchers” spend their time coming to these obvious conclusions because they won’t get tenure if they don’t publish something – anything – in their field?

If Mr. Academic had spent more time reading the classics and less time bugging people with questions about their relationships and health, he might have come across Cicero’s essay “On Friendship.”

“On Friendship” was written about 40 years before Jesus was born and is a conversation among a group of men discussing another man’s recent death and how much his friendship meant to one of the speakers.

The conversation then moves to the necessity of friendship in general.

“It is so true that Nature abhors isolation, and always leans upon something as a stay and support; and this is found in its most pleasing form in our closest friend,” sighs Laelius.

Aristotle wrote in the third century BC that a friend is one soul in two bodies.

Today we would assume he meant friend as mate or lover, but he did not.

In a world where marriages were arranged by parents and mates often died years before the other partner, people invested their emotions in friendships with likeminded companions.

Cicero quotes Laelius as saying that good friends “delight in fair and equitable conduct” between themselves, that they “bear each other’s burdens” and “not only serve and love but also respect each other.”

He says friendship “must be considered to have secured the most excellent and auspicious combination for reaching nature’s highest good” and that a life with money and fame without close friends is worse than a life with little money, no fame, and a house full of friends.

It seems those ancients were onto something.

Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, taught that true friendship alone makes contentment possible in life.

“Psychology Today” says that studies show loneliness increases the risk of suicide and can put children on a path to delinquency and antisocial behaviors.

Perhaps that is why Cicero, who lived more than 2,000 years ago and had nothing more to go on than observation and experience, wrote that “in view of the instability and perishableness of mortal things, we should be continually on the lookout for some to love and by whom to be loved; for if we lose affection and kindliness from our life, we lose all that gives it charm.”

Ancient Roman moralist and author, Valerius Maximus, retold stories of mythical and real famous friendships.

He wrote this in the foreword to his book: “The chain of friendship is effective and powerful, and in no way inferior to the powers of blood.”

Parents read these stories to their children to show the importance of companionship and to imitate the examples they found.

The “Psychology Today” article ends with these words: “We are built for social contact… Social skills are crucial for your health.”

Cicero had a similar sentiment expressed this way: “Make up your minds to this: Virtue (without which friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is Friendship.”

 

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