In this video, I look at Seneca's third letter to Lucilius: On What Makes a Good Friend. In this letter, Seneca explains the importance of friendship. How do we know what makes a good friend? And how do we know when a friendship isn't working?
🔸 How we should trust and judge our friends
🔸 When we should end a friendship
🔸 Why we should be friends with ourselves
🔸 Why a friend is someone we can be ourselves with Seneca is urging us to re-define friendship, so we can spend time with people who we can trust and feel comfortable with.
✉️ Letter 3 - On What Makes a Good Friend
“Dear Luclilius. You gave letters to a friend of yours—so you write—to bring to me, and then you advise me not to tell him all your affairs, since you yourself are not in the habit of doing so. Thus in one and the same letter you have said both that he is your friend and that he is not. Well, if you used that word not with its proper meaning but as if it were public property, calling him a friend in the same way as we call all candidates “good men” or address people as “sir” when we don't remember their names, then let it go. But if you think that a person is a friend when you do not trust him as much as you trust yourself, you are seriously mistaken; you do not know the meaning of real friendship. Consider every question with a friend; but first, consider the friend. After you make a friend, you should trust him—but before you make a friend, you should make a judgment. People who love someone and then judge that person are mixing up their responsibilities: they should judge first, then love, as Theophrastus advised.* Take time to consider whether or not to receive a person into your friendship; but once you have decided to do so, receive him with all your heart, and speak with him as candidly as with yourself.
Live in such a way that anything you would admit to yourself could be admitted even to an enemy. Even so, there are things that are customarily kept private; with a friend, though, you should share all your concerns, all your thoughts. If you believe him loyal, you will make him so. Some people teach their friends to betray them by their very fear of betrayal: by being suspicious, they give the other person the right to transgress. He is my friend: why should I hold back my words in his presence? When I am with him, why is it not as if I am alone? There are those who unload their worries into every available ear, telling anyone they meet what should be entrusted only to friends. Others are reluctant to confide even in those who are closest to them; they press every secret to their chest, and would keep it even from themselves if they could. Neither alternative is appropriate—to trust everyone or to trust no one; both are faults, but the former is what I might call a more honorable fault, the latter a safer one. Similarly, there is reason to criticize both those who are always on the move and those who are always at rest.
Liking to be in the fray does not mean that one is hardworking; it is only the hustle and bustle of an agitated mind. Finding every movement a bother does not mean that one is tranquil; it is just laxity and idleness. So let’s keep in mind this saying I have read in Pomponius: Some flee so far into their dens that they think everything outside is turmoil. There should be a mix: the lazy one should do something, the busy one should rest. Consult with nature: it will tell you that it made both day and night. Farewell. Seneca''
I hope you enjoy the third episode of my Seneca series. :)
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