On Friendship

Grandpa is quite a content person except he had one discontentment that he mentioned to me quite often in his younger days when I visited. “I wish I had friends.” I found it difficult to understand, for being a self-proclaimed Byronic hero and a loner who held disdain for the world, longing for male friendship was the last thing that entered my mind. I thought I didn’t need any friends because I didn’t have any close friends.

“Kathy is my best friend.” I derived great comfort from the fact that my wife and I are in many ways great friends. Romantic love must be built on the warm bed of friendship. I have found this to be true and have been telling my children so repeatedly. Romantic love will not last unless there is a strong friendship behind the relationship. “Married couple in youth, but companionship in old age,” goes a Chinese saying. When the fire of romantic love dies, old couples can still warm themselves with the embers of friendship. “Darling, we are growing old, silver threads among the gold…” I found myself singing this often to my best friend lying next to me.

Even so, a longing for male friendship seems to be rearing its ugly head as I grow older. I long to have someone with whom I can have a long walk and with whom I can share the secrets of who I am. The soul mate whom we have been passionately pursuing may be found in our male friends a lot more easily than among our girl friends. One of King David’s greatest loses in life was the loss of Jonathan. After his bosom friend died, David was deprived of a friend for the rest of his life. Bo Yia, a renowned musician in ancient times, broke his violin after his best friend Chung Tz Chi passed away, for from then on, no one would truly appreciate his music.

“I long to have a friend who can appreciate my Chinese poetry,” I said to Kathy the other day.

“Why don’t you contact your high school friend who is a now a literature professor,” Kathy suggested.

Kathy showed herself to be a true friend of mine, for this professor friend is a woman. Contrary to romantic love, true friendship is disinterested and un-possessive. I guess I should be content with having a true friend under my own roof and be thankful.