The Perfect Friend

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 241, 31 December 1927, Page 16

The Perfect Friend

A Complete Character to Which We All Contribute

THE perfect friend would comprehend us in all our moods, -*• stimulate us when dull, comfort us when sad, take an eager interest in our successes and a sympathetic delight in our pleasures, and be able to restore our self-respect when it had received a blow—all this without insincerity or flattery. The perfect friend would understand what we meant, however badly we said it, and would see that there was reasonableness in our side of an argument without necessarily agreeing with us. Perfect agreement is not always perfection. The perfect friend would not havj in her whole composition even one blind spot where we are concerned. “NO SUCH PERSON” With such a friend never out of reach, never preoccupied with anyone else, never ill, and of course never self-absorbed, life at its worst would be supportable, at its best remarkably enhanced. There is, of course, no such person. It might be bad for us if there were, because too little would be asked of us. The only “perfect friend” is composite, made up of many of us, each supplying what the other lacks. No one human being can be everything to another; she can at best be but part of what the other ne#2ds When we have learned this we have learned a lesson in humility and common sense—in humility because we shall no longer feel resentment when a friend finds in someone else a response of which we are incapable; common sense because we shall not again make the mistake of looking for the good qualities of one person in another. We should see friendship as a harmony, ourselves as the orchestra. There may be an instrument that we iove best, but we realise that it could not produce the whole harmony by itself. DISCIPLINE OF FRIENDSHIP There are discordant notes when one of us grows careless of or discontented with her part, or envious of the part of another, or is urged to play that part and cannot. Sometimes we feel chilled when one particular friend is unable to share some interest or enthusiasm, when we get up against that inevitable blind spot. This is part of the discipline of friendship. It compels us at one and the same time to remember the departments of life in which this momentarily disappointing friend is a true companion, and to recall the fact that elsewhere we have a friend who would have heard us in this very matter with an answering heart. If we have learned our lesson truly, it will remind us also that we ourselves are not the perfect friend.