MORE THAN A FRIEND
Friendship is defined as deep, reciprocal
bond built on mutual trust, unconditional support, acceptance and loyalty, consistently present between two persons without
expecting anything in return.
Some synonyms of friendship are
companionship, intimacy, affinity, fellowship, attachment, alliance and
comradeship.
Friendship diminishes grief, sorrow,
loneliness, feebleness of many kinds. It also keeps away the disadvantages of loneliness.
Swiss theologian John Caspar Lavater
(1741-1801) said: He that hath no friend, and no enemy, is one of the vulgar,
without talents, powers or energy.
According to the English orator and courtier Dormer
Stanhope Chesterfield (1694-1773) “ Real friendship is a slow grower, and never
thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.
There are several unique examples of
reciprocal friendship in the poetry of world literature. One such is between the
Persian poet Maulana Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273) and the
other Persian poet Shams Tabrizi (1185-1248) . “They had a profound spiritual
and platonic relationship where Shams Tabrizi was the spiritual master and Rumi
was the devoted disciple. Their connection was transformative for Rumi,
shifting him from a learned scholar to a passionate mystic.
Given below is a poem titled The Friend by Rumi.
“There is a being who is drunk
without wine, full without food, and buried in a ruin, someone not made of
earth, air, fire, or water. a rain out of the clear blue, hundreds of
nightskies and suns, one who is given wisdom directly, not from books, one
beyond any religion, or right and wrong, one with wonderful friends, one who does
not exist, a hidden glory of Shams . There is no need to look anywhere for this
one. Who is your whole life.
Note: The
word Shams in Persian means Sun.
G.R.Kanwal
6 December 2025
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