Column
It’s a funny old world
THIS WEEK’S COLUMNIST Bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith
We’ve always known that friendship is important, but there are still interesting questions about it that keep philosophers busy. What do we owe our friends? Is it possible to be a friend to a person who isn’t honest or reliable? How many friends can the average person have? These questions continue to interest those who think about friendship in our lives.
I have always admired people with a talent for friendship. I often wonder about how they do it, and have reached the conclusion that the real key is openness. Friendship is about admitting other people into your life, and becoming, in your turn, part of theirs.
It’s about sharing, and giving. Mean people are not good at making friends, as a rule, while generous people tend to have legions of friends. Friendship rescues us from loneliness. We are a social species – unlike cats, who, incidentally, tend not to have many friends, and only befriend us strictly on their terms. We need people because without others we are, quite
simply, unhappy. And there the scientists have recently come up with hard evidence that people who are lonely are more prone to illness and live shorter lives than those who have plenty of friends. There is a reason for that, apparently: loneliness seems to weaken the immune system.
I would like schools to include friendship somewhere in their curriculum. Children instinctively form friendships, but they are not necessarily taught how a true friend should behave. When I talk to young people going off to university or college, I make a point of saying to them: ‘Over the next couple of years, you may well make the best friends you are going to make in this life.’ I think at the age of 18 or 19, we often do not realise that, and we don’t keep those friendships going as well as we should.
Old friendships are like old wine: rich and satisfying. But such friendships require effort, or they can wither without our realising it. An annual Christmas card will not be enough. Personal contact,
