Leonard Sweet is the most quote-able guy I know. So I've been sharing some quotes from his book, "11 Indispensable Relationships You Can't Be Without". Here is one more:
"Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter.
Whoever finds one has found a treasure....
Faithful friends are life saving medicine"
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
In 1961, near the end of his life, baseball legend Ty Cobb confessed, "If I had the chance to live my life over, I do things a little different. I'd have more friends." He had plenty of acquaintances, hangers-on, and Washington friends, (defined as someone who stabs you in the front). But Ty Cobb died without a Jonathan. A Jonathan may be the scarcest species on planet Earth, especially to a Saul. At least the Roman philosopher and politician Cicero thought so.
My high school required one foreign language course, so I took Latin. I didn't want to take Latin. Most of my buddies sat in the front row of French or Spanish class, and bowed adoringly at the hottest teachers in school. But my parents, insisting that those I called friends didn't know nearly as much as I thought they did, and weren't nearly the friends I thought they were, made me take Latin. It would help me understand English better, they said.
So I slouched in the back row and listened to Mr Garno, a short, balding, serious, up-tight, white shirt instructor, hoping he wouldn't call my name to come up in front and read out loud a poem or conjugate a sentence or explain how the English word satire came from the Latin "satura", which means a mixed dish filled with various kinds of fruit.
In my third or fourth year of struggling to bring this dead language to life, Mr. Garno assigned me the task of translating from scratch Cicero's essay, "On True Friendship". My closest seatmate got what I thought was an infinitely more interesting assignment. She translated Cicero's detailed description of "how to hold the index finger when gesticulating in oratory".
Life has a few landmark moments. This was one, translating what I now believe is the greatest essay on friendship ever written. Its landmark moment status came about because my translation took place when I was suffering from the crushing betrayal of a so called friend. This personal Judas told "my don't tell anyone but I have a crush on Linda Armstrong confidence" to that same Linda Armstrong! I avoided Linda after she knew my dark secret, and never really talked to her again in high school, (we spoke often but I never made eye contact). At our 15 year high school reunion, Linda came up to me, we looked at each other in the eye, and she said "how come you never liked me?"
"Liked you?" I exclaimed. "You don't remember?" My first serious college essay was God, Death and Linda Armstrong."
Cicero's essay challenged me to take out my one hand and count my fingers. If when I die I can count "on the fingers of one hand" the number of true friends I have, Cicero said. I would be the wealthiest person on the planet.
"Nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed
ever more intensely on God, than friendship for the friends of God."
No comments:
Post a Comment