on friendship and happiness

i wrote this way back in april for a class, i think i need to do a lot of editing coz this was a  rush work haha. i havent even finished this YET.

On Friendship and Happiness

 

            It will be difficult to discuss the relationship between friendship and happiness without mentioning love. As I gathered in the Nicomachean Ethics, “love is an activity that brings about friendship and therefore happiness at the end”. It means that when you don’t love yourself, you wouldn’t be good to yourself nor be friend to your self therefore it will be difficult for you to be good to others or even be friends with others; and when you have no friend, happiness is difficult to attain. As I understand Aristotle, self love is important for us to see our selves’ worth but not to the extent that we become self-centered that we don’t care for other beings. Self love means that one must love one’s self therefore he will do things or activities that will improve himself only to be of help to other people. Aristotle even said that “To be a good man, one should love himself.” It is important for one to be a good man for a good man is surely a good friend that everyone desires. And also the saying “charity begins at home” as a definition of love only intensifies the importance of self love. For charity means sharing to others what you possess. So how one will be able to share to others something he doesn’t posses? The act of charity that most politicians claim to do is not really a genuine charity for what they share to people actually came from the people (the taxes they paid).  If a poor farmer owns a piece of land and he planted crops on it and persevere each day to yield good crops and on the harvest time he shares his produce with his sick neighbor who is in need of assistance, that can be called charity for the farmer shares what genuinely is his. And if the farmer enrolled on a seminar about farming so he can do his craft better, can’t it be called self love? When one loves himself in order to be good at what he does thinking that he can share more to others later on, isn’t it altruism as well? Therefore self love promotes altruism. It may sound paradoxical but I believe that when one loves himself so that he can share more to the good of many others, it is indeed unselfishness.

 

            I guess children naturally are unselfish, or should I just speak for myself. As a child, I thought less of myself and thought more of the people around me. I also thought about the things surrounding me like my pet dogs, the matters old people were discussing and were said that I cannot understand for I was young, about life (I remember asking my mom the reason of our existence on earth when I was four or five) and the things that are not yet known to me then but I knew existed. I also thought of helping the poor old woman cross the street but I just cannot cross the street. I thought of the reason why we use Gumamela to make bubbles instead of the Sampaguita. The less I thought of my self the happier I was. I don’t really agree when Aristotle said that “a boy is not happy owing to his age…for it is required not only complete virtue but also a complete life…” for my happiest days were in my childhood when I believe I made friends not based on utility nor pleasure for I have not yet the notion of utility, perhaps pleasure but I can say it was based on virtue for the friendships I made then still exists now although there are not benefits I can think of that they get from me nor I from them. And I can say those were the happy days and not pleasurable days for it lasted for a long time. Or Aristotle may be right in saying that for as I grew up, happiness seemed to be out of reach so were friends. 

 

Friendship for me is a relationship that I don’t put so much trouble on as I grew up. I was aware that we are social being but there was this point in my life when I believed that we can be self-sufficient and we don’t need anybody to lead a “good” life and be happy. And those were my dark days. The end I was struggling for then was contentment. I thought not of happiness but of contentment. I thought people and relationships bring about pains and sufferings so I distanced my self from people. Though many of my acquaintance would say I am friendly, in truth I only have a handful of friends. I mean, my kind of friendship comes in layers—from the best friend to the mere acquaintance. When I was a kid, I have peers who have what they call best friends. And I don’t have one, probably, because I have such a high standard for a best friend. I believed that a best friend must be a perfect friend. My best friend must understand me at all times and accept me for who I really am and not with what I have (maybe I was then thinking of the idea of friendship based on virtue but it cannot be for I have so many conditions) and other qualifications I can think of. So I just settled for the several close friends I have then. They were reliable and truthful to me. And as I grew up these close friends remained as they were but some of them I promoted to a higher degree of friendship until one of them finally became my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were eight and we’ve been friends for a long time but only in college that we declared that we are each other’s best friends. It was during my dark days that our friendship became really close. As it were my “self-sufficient days”, she’s maybe one of the exceptions that I made. I tried to prove that a man can really be self-sufficient (my own terms: I didn’t get my allowance from my parents but I did survived from my tutorial earnings but still not self-sufficient for I relied on somebody else) but I proved myself wrong. I had not a clue why I was trying hard to isolate myself from people. I might be tired of interacting with them but what can I do, it is indeed necessary for a man to interact with another. Aristotle said that “even a happy man need friends for friends is the greatest of external goods…a good man need people to do well by”. How much more a confused teenager would need people to get by? That maybe the way I got a true friendship in my troubled days. But isn’t it a friendship based on utility for I needed someone who I can trust my self with? But on my part it is indeed a friendship based on virtue for after several years gone by, and though I thought I wasn’t really a “good man” then, the friendship remained intact. Aristotle also said that “friendship is a way to make us happy”. I agree with him for the mere presence of friends uplift one’s spirit especially on bad times. “The man who is to be happy will therefore need virtuous friends” as it is in the readings but where can we find those good men?

 

There are decreasing good men these days if we would take Aristotle’s definition of a good man. Maybe there are still virtues men these days. But distinguishing a virtues man from a pretender is quite hard to do. Trust is an essential element on relationships especially on friendships, but how can one be assured that the trust would not be betrayed? Of course it is a risk to trust another person. But if one wouldn’t take the risk, no relationship will be formed. And the thing that I don’t like in myself is that I always tend to trust people even strangers. And even when the trust had been betrayed the first time, I would still give the person the benefit of the doubt as Aristotle put it , a good friend thinks that “he would never wrong me” to his friend. But such thought is only applicable on “friendships among good men for both are friends for their own sake…for the virtue of their goodness”. Why can’t all friendships be like that? “True friendship”, according to Aristotle, “is without qualification, good or pleasant seems to be good and desirable—friendship is a state of character—mutual love involves choice and choice springs from state of character” So what is the relationship between happiness and friendship?

 

            It is said that “we all wanted eternal happiness.” It is also said that friendship brings about happiness. If happiness is the ultimate end and we can attain it through our relationshipwith others, i.e.friendship, therefore we must be at all times be good to ourselves so to be good to others so to gain friends and finally reach the eternal happiness.