An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of Connection
Marginalian editor, Maria Popova, says this:
You can glean a great deal about a person from the constellation of friends around the gravitational pull of their personhood. “Whatever our degree of friends may be, we come more under their influence than we are aware,” the trailblazing astronomer Maria Mitchell observed as she contemplated how we co-create each other and recreate ourselves in friendship. Her friend Ralph Waldo Emerson — whom she taught to look through a telescope — believed that all true friendship rests on two pillars. In his own life, he put the theory into practice in his friendship with his young protégé Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817–May 6, 1862) — a solitary and achingly introverted person himself, who thought deeply and passionately about the rewards and challenges of friendship
She quotes Thoreau:
The field where friends have met is consecrated forever. Man seeks friendship out of the desire to realize a home here… The friend is like wax in the rays that fall from our own hearts. My friend does not take my word for anything, but he takes me. He trusts me as I trust myself. We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship.
llustration by Maurice Sendak from a vintage ode to friendship by Janice May Udry
For me, in this time of my life, I have some really nice aquaintences, and a few deep friends. They all accept that I'm not a party gal any more! I like the image I learned from some internet or another saying "You are the average of 5 of your friends." I think of my friends, and feel just what that might mean to me.
BR
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI am happy with the few close friends I have. I am not a party girl, those days are long over.
Have a happy weekend.
I did have times as a young woman when I attempted to have more groups of friends, almost parties...but I failed and was glad to come home to simple one on one friendships.
DeleteAs an introvert, I have never had many friends at any given time. It’s even harder in much of adulthood, but I have a wife and kids and grandkids.
ReplyDeleteYes, having a family close to you (and a cat) does give a good sense of belonging to a group. I have to text or call to get to my group these days, including the family scattered to the winds.
DeleteSuch lovely sentiments — and so true! I am writing a blog series this month about my high school years, and I am pleased to still have two wonderful women friends from that time. We are all more sedate than we once were, but still adventurous in our own ways — and have moved in tandem on our life journeys despite being geographically apart. So grateful for these and other friendships over the years.
ReplyDeleteIn 2001 I reconnected with two high school friends, and we emailed like crazy for over 10 years, when the first one of us died. It was another 7 years until the next one was gone. So I made several sculptures in clay of three trees standing with their limbs touching...to celebrate our renewed friendships in our senior years. I'm enjoying my groups of friends where I live, as well as getting to know a few bloggers pretty well.
DeleteI've always tended to have a small number of friends. I am an introvert.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have close friends. I have social anxiety, and cannot be in groups. My poor grandie is wrestling with it, too.
ReplyDelete