On Friendship and Family and Values
“Relations are made by Fate,
Friends by choice”. French poet-Abbe Jacques Delille
Samuel Johnson said, “Be slow in choosing a friend, but slower in changing him”. Johnson went on to say, “A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.”
Yes, it is important to stay close, and support good friends …as Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”, said Woodrow Wilson (28th President of the U.S. (1856- 1924).
“A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter: he that has found one has found a treasure. There is nothing so precious as a faithful friend, and no scales can measure his excellence.”
Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus
A lucky person has relations as good friends. In my family my wife and I are estranged from my siblings as they all worship at the foot of Mammon – a god derived from the Aramaic mamona who was a Syrian god of gold representing accumulation of wealth. My siblings got their love of money from our mother who was very frugal and had a childhood of uncertainty and poverty.
Her father had suffered a great loss of wealth in the great stock market crash of 1929 and subsequently ended up in the Homewood Sanitarium in Guelph, Ontario for an extended stay. As a result, my mother developed a great appreciation for money which was passed on to my three siblings. Unfortunately, this worship of money has infected my relationship with my siblings – every family meeting focuses on expenses and costs associated with our shared cottage property. Meanwhile my wife and I continually invest in improving the property at our own expense. The cottage was purchased by my grandfather in 1940 – being an older property, it is I constant need of repair and ongoing maintenance which my wife and I feel compelled to pay for as we like to keep the cottage in good shape for the enjoyment of our children and grandchildren. It seems that the burden of looking after the cottage property has fallen on my wife and I because we are the only family members to have grandchildren who absolutely love being at the cottage. In fact, my oldest grandchild, Ava, calls the cottage her “happy place” – as a result, my wife and I would do anything to keep it that way.
It is unfortunate that we have so little in common with my siblings. As a consequence, with a touch of irony, my wife’s family, located in Australia, are actually closer to our kids than my Canadian family, despite living on the other side of the planet! We are also closer to our many cousins in the U.S A. and in Canada, which is quite interesting.
It is a great pity that my siblings’ values are so skewed towards money that they cannot learn to share our cottage property. In the end, they will suffer for their anti-family, cold-heartedness. As Isaac Penington wrote “Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; bearing one with another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another with a tender hand.” My brother has actually resorted to violence and tried to start a fight with me in an attempt to keep my family off the property… it’s actually comical…I’ve been able to let this incident go by following the advice of Marcus Aurelius, “The best way to avenge yourself is not to be like that.” The words of John Donne are perhaps prescient here, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” This brother leads a life of little material need, traveling often, because he has no children or grandchildren…and, he has no family friends in my orbit… a bitter person (with anger management issues- in family meetings he violently slams his fist on the table when he tries to make a point) and a sad situation.
In conclusion, I have learned that it is values that trump relations and shared values are the necessary basis, and glue, for true friendship, blood or otherwise. Here’s a final word:
“Friends are God’s apology for relations” Hugh Kingswell