THE COURSE OF FRIENDSHIP

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 107, 27 July 1927, Page 5

THE COURSE OF FRIENDSHIP

‘EASY’ FRIENDS AND ‘DIFFICULT’ ONES Friendships may be divided into two categories: the easy and the difficult. Easy friendships that run along smoothly on the surface of things, sharing only the obvious and the normal aspects of life, may be jolly enough relationships, so far as they go. But from their nature, they seldom can attain to the heights of the difficult friendships that also know the depths ere they flower to their full beauty. Some of these hardwon friendships have triumphantly belied the theory that first impressions endure. I have known two people mutually antagonised at a first meeting, only to find, in the fulness of time, that each had misread the other. Some momentary mood, some purely external but alienating attitude that completely disguised the potentialities of the inner self, some chance expression of opinion, has created an impression ultimately dispelled in the light of mutual revelation. It is in the course of such difficult readjustments that one realises what friendship means. It means the capacity to differ as as to agree. It means a gallant and philosophical acceptance of the fact that one lovely hour must often compensate for disillusioned days; days that nevertneless, in the mind of true friendship, are powerless to engulf the memory of that perfect moment. What does it matter, to friendship worthy of the name, that thoughts and impulses cannot for ever march alongside? Is it not part of the joy of these difficult friendships that they must sometimes ta*e different roads? Is not the journey revealed in mutually intuitive flashes? Need there be only desolation in the temporary parting of the ways? Is there no thrill in the exchange of divergent experiences? When once, in the momentary flash of insight, the soul s true face has been revealed, do not those very differences enhance the joy of mutual discovery? Alinds that make separate pilgrimages may kneel at the same shrines; and hearts that beat to different chords can make immortal harmony.