Website owner: James Miller
On friendship
I am 81 years old. I would say I have one honest and true friend. My wife. Before my mother died I had two honest friends. My wife and my mother. Over the years there have been two or three other people who I would say honestly liked me. A couple of my teachers, one in grade school and one in high school, and a fellow in whose guest house I stayed for a couple of years just after I graduated from college. He and his wife were around 65 and he used to take me with him on fishing trips on the Chesapeake Bay. All of the rest of the people that I have known over the years, the people I knew in grade school, high school, college, and on jobs at which I worked I would describe as acquaintances. They were just people I talked to and knew. Some may have liked me and some may have disliked me. Often you just don’t know. We live in a very tricky, deceptive world. Honest friends are few.
One young Latin girl once told my wife that she had two or three hundred friends. (They were all Facebook or social media type friends and she had all of their phone numbers in her cell phone.) My wife’s reply was, “I have only one friend. My husband!”
I am not unhappy at having only one honest friend. There are a great many people who may think they have many friends whereas in actual fact they have none. True friends are not that easy to find. I am reminded of the following:
Be civil to all
serviceable to many
familiar with few,
friend to one,
enemy to none.
A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody.
A friend that you buy with presents will be bought from you.
Adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
Choose your friends with care, that you may have choice
friends.
There are three faithful friends ---
An old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
15 May 2021
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