| The Building of Character |
Chapter 16 |
Page 7 |
Another example is that in which one claims a friend exclusively for one’s own. There are such people. They want their friend to show interest in no other, to do kindness to no other. This also might be excused in a certain kind of very sentimental young lovers, but it is not confined to such. It exists in many cases toward others of the same sex, nor is it confined to the very young. Persons have been known to demand that the one who is their friend shall be theirs so exclusively as scarcely to treat others respectfully. Any pleasant courtesy to another has been taken as a personal slight and hurt to the chosen “friend.”
Unless both persons are alike weak and sentimental, such a spirit cannot but make friendship hard. No man or woman who has the true conception of life is willing to be bound in such chains. We cannot fufil our mission in God’s great world of human beings by permitting ourselves to be tied up in this sentimental way to any one person. No worthy friendship ever makes such demands. Love knows no such limitations; only jealousy can inspire such narrowness, and jealousy is always ignoble and dishonoring. A noble wife and husband, bound in one, in the most sacred of ties, make no such weak and selfish demand upon each other, each desires the other, while loyal and true in the closer relation, to be the largest possible blessing to all the world, knowing that their mutual love is not made less, but richer, by the exercise of unselfishness toward all who need help.
The same spirit should be manifested in all friendship, and will be manifested just so far as they are noble and exalted in character, and are set free from norrowness and jealousy. A man need be no less my friend, no less true, no less helpful to me, because he is the friend of hundreds more who turn to him with their cravings and needs, and find strength and inspiration in him. The heart grows rich in loving, and my friend becomes more to me through being the friend of others. But if I demand that he shall be my friend only, I make it very hard for him to be my friend at all.
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