“For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.” ~ Aristotle
Your integrity is based entirely on the degree to which you maintain an orientation in truth. If you are concerned about your integrity, the truth must come before friends, family, country or any other human construct to which people have devoted their allegiance through the ages.
I’m always amazed by people who maintain so-called friendships on the basis of a shared sense of disdain or dislike. Commiseration is not worthy of the title “friendship.” Friendship to me is a mechanism through which the vibrancy of life and dignity of truth can be magnified.
How do you define friendship?
Gregory Hake 
I think that your definition of friendship is the same as mine. There are plenty of strange relationships that you can get into with people in this world, but two people that can really create something meaningful together that is greater than the sum of their parts is a good start. I’ll say that I have also thought for a long time that the minimum definition of friend for me is someone that you could ask to go check on a loved one if you were out of town, and I guess I wouldn’t trust someone that much if they were not a person of integrity. So while my definition has changed a bit, it has broadened and not lessened.
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Great post and at the same time kind of poignant. It seems it should be a natural and common understanding yet friends have been confused with associates, family and cronies. While any of them maybe friends, being one doesn’t guarantee friendship. To me friendship is particular for the elements of love and trust that are central to it. There must be a shared dedication and enthusiasm for the things that connect people in creation. Many have settled for the counterfeit that passes for friendship but without trust and love inevitably it’s hollow hull soon crumbles under the pressure of change or circumstance. Friendship is truly one of the delights of living!
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Love in expression – friendship
Friendship like Love, cannot be got. To be known, it must be given freely.
Friendship demands nothing, and accepts only the highest and finest possible.
A true friend seeks to complement, that the other be lift up, even to greater heights than the himself has attained.
A true friend has an Undeviating shared vision with respect to purpose.
Great consideration, that is still seeking to progress, thanks Gregg!
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Yours is the best definition of friendship I’ve ever read!
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Well said!
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Your words set the stage for freedom to be known. Friendship in what is true allows for interchanges that are real, fun and pointed. It is freeing to being oriented in what is true first which allows for friendships, work, family to be put in perspective. As this is put first the constructs that we have in our lives can be animated with the life that we are. Thank you for your liberating words. I think Aristotle would have approved.
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That’s a good question. Here are a few ways that I would define friendship: A mutual respect and appreciation for the things of love and life; mutual care for those things in life that are delicate and need protection; a shared pleasure in the qualities of nobility, not degradation; inspiring one another to be the greatest they can be; having empathy for your friends, but never allowing friendship to trump your core orientation.
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So many ways to describe the spectrum of friendship! Still, I think that rare quality that is both absolute in its adherence to truth and spaciously and lovingly understanding in its chosen interactions is a central part of the matter.
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Wonderful post. It made me want to google friendship and here is what I found in Psychology Today.
“Anais Nin put it beautifully when she said, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
How amazing is this! It really makes want to be alert to how I am looking at my current friendships and what I offer to others in current and future friendships.
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