On Relationships and Love: Friendship

Hello everybody, how you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome to another lecture. Today we're going to be sticking with relationships and love and this brief section will be our usual guided philosophical meditation. The focus for today's lectures will be on friendship. So we're going to be doing our questions and prompts as usual and then a little bit of bibliotherapy from Sanica. So first question. In your opinion, what makes for a healthy friendship? And then of course the opposite, right? What makes for an unhealthy friendship? Now let's go from that kind of general question, right? We might be describing virtues of a friendship, the things we expect in a friendship to kind of apply it to our daily life, right? So think of the friend or maybe like one to three friends that you spend the most time with. And I would say really like write the person's name, describe how you know them, how long you've known them, and in really good detail, describe their relationship, right? And we might want to focus on certain things like what does this person teach you? How do you maybe guide them in some ways? Even thinking of examples recently of conversations you've had that have been good examples of teaching and learning, right? How do you maybe console each other during hard times? How do you congratulate each other? Right? And I think even to stick with that for a second, because this is something I'm a little passionate about. I think thinking about the way your friends console you and the way you console them and the way you congratulate each other is very important because I think we learn a lot about people not only when we commiserate, maybe we come together, right? We maybe, you know, we need to commiserate a little bit here and there. We need people we can vent with, right? That are, let's say, compassionate enough, but also eventually start encouraging us to make changes, I think, it's a positive way to sort of, you know, have commiseration be a part of our lives, but not be the only thing we do with friends. But I also think the way people respond to your success is very interesting, right? When you do something good, do they just immediately start talking about something they did recently? Or do they like really just congratulate you? Do they really like, wow, that's great for you. I'm happy for you, right? How do they respond to both when things go poorly and when things are going well? And then how do you respond to that when others present you with those things, right? I think a healthy friendship is one in which we are able to, you know, encourage each other, commiserate with each other when necessary, and also one where, you know, we don't see each other's success as threatening, right? We're not envious of each other and we're definitely not jealous of each other, right? So for me, this is actually something I learned in an ethics class in college that really stuck with me for years now. The difference between envy and jealousy, right? So envy is when you want what someone else has, but you're okay. You might even be, let's be optimistic, let's be positive, right? You might even be happy that they have it, but you want it. I don't think that's terrible, right? Although we, I think that's still something we should generally avoid, right? But to me, that sort of makes sense. Someone gets a promotion to work. Oh, I would want a promotion. Doesn't mean I don't want them to have it. Good for them. They earned it, right? This is, I can learn from them. This is great. Jealousy is definitely something we want to avoid though, because jealousy is when you want something someone else has and you also don't want them to have it. So that's bad, right? We want to avoid that for sure. So are your friends jealous? Are you jealous? How can we work on that? Because we definitely can, right? We could see that ultimately jealousy is just, you know, one, a negative thing. And two, I think usually jealousy comes from some type of insecurity, right? Even I think, you know, to say envy comes from insecurity, I think it also work. But I also think it's an interesting balance between understanding ourselves, right? So by that, I mean, it's great to be grateful for what we have in life. It's great to have, I think, even some sense of being content, of course, maybe even some sense of being satisfied. We want to have that somewhat in our lives, of course, that being said, I also think we're constantly in the process of becoming, right? And it's normal and healthy to understand that and try to guide that process by having goals, by seeing, you know, a future version of ourselves that will likely in a number of ways be impacted by what we see and experience in the world, right? That's going to involve friendships. It's going to involve all relationships, right? So we want to keep that in mind. But we don't want friendships characterized by jealousy. It's a major takeaway from that. We also don't want to be jealous people. And I think to Tom Rajesh, I was just saying a minute ago, if you're feeling secure in yourself and you're, let's say, pursuing things on a daily basis, if you're pursuing your your pneumonia, you're pursuing your purpose, you're not going to be jealous. Right? Maybe we make a little room for envy, maybe, right? But even envy, we could say how, how, how can it maybe be less envious? Because I understand that what is four other people is four of them is one argument we might want to say, right? We might want to confront. We're going to look at that when we look at epictetus when he tells us to create our own merit, right? Whereas what's for me is what's happening right now for me, I have to take full advantage of this, give full appreciation to this and make the best of what is my own. And that'll definitely divert our gaze and our energy from cultivating jealousy. Right? So if you succeed and then someone's jealous of you or if someone else succeeds, you find that you're starting to get jealous or envy us, right? Be careful, right? Work with that narrative, work with that internal dialogue, to see that, well, this is maybe just from a lack of focusing on what I can bring to the world, or lack of focusing on me appreciating what I have in my my life. And I have to practice these things. And that'll kind of suffocate the jealousy out, I think, or push it out, maybe better way of seeing it. All right, so let's keep going here a little bit. This is a negative one, right? What would be some reasons for you to end a friendship? Why would those be reasons? Let's go back to the positive a little bit, right? Describe your healthiest friendship in the present. Describe your healthiest friendship or friendships from the past. Characterize what makes them so healthy. Right? So it's sort of a grounding of the first question in a little more specifics, right? List people by name, think of actual memories, right? So now we're maybe again taking the first question in the virtue of let's say honesty. Well, think of a time when a friend was really honest with you, and that was helpful. And, of course, the time when you were really honest with a friend and you felt good about that, it was helpful for them. If once again, honesty might be one of your top virtues for friendships that are healthy, which I would say for me that's definitely up there. Another question. A person or a couple of people I should spend more time with are because I can do this by. So one of the interesting things one of my close friends does is I think it's once or twice a week during his drive home. He works in Jersey and lives in the Bronx. And when he's driving home, he'll just he'll make time to call a friend he hasn't seen recently. And he's done this for years. And it's I think really encouraged him and helped him stay in touch with people like from college or from home from back home. And it seems like a really healthy thing that he does that I've sort of started to adopt. Like there are always people in my family that I'm sure to call or FaceTime or whatever at least once or twice a week. And friends too for me that I'm really short of text. Like if I don't text a friend one or two specific friends and I don't see them, I really go out of my way to make sure I do that. So those are examples too of just small ways where we can have quote more time with people. And identifying the reason there will just encourage us to I think move in the direction and then the actual how of it. I'm going to make sure I text this person. I'm going to make sure I drive over to Queens or whatever at least once a month just to get coffee. But I'm like you know we have to have purpose and I think also making a plan helps us. And of course there's no reality outside of action. So then we have to take the action right. Yeah I think for these exercises too we really want to spend time in our memories. It's sort of working to engage with the moments that have been important in our current friendships, the moments in the past that might have been important for us to realize that we had to move on from certain friendships and make those lessons. Because I think similar to an extent of course not the same. To starting a new romantic relationship, friendships, starting new friendships, leaving friendships can be really difficult at times. So the more information we have, the more informed we are, the more information we become. Which is to say we have it lined up. We have our ideas lined up with our actions. There's a greater sense of continuity in our lives. These are all good things. Because starting a new friendship can feel intimidating the same way or again in a similar way, not the same I'd say, starting a new romantic relationship. Leaving a friendship can be really painful. right as, you know, so so can leaving a romantic relationship or having a familiar relationship change or end in some regard, right? So having these conversations I think is really meaningful and friendship is an incredibly meaningful part of life. I think, you know, even in the ancient Greek perspective, right, friendship was we're going to read from Seneca. I mean, it was serious to call someone a friend was a really meaningful thing. So to spend time thinking about this, spend time thinking about how we could improve our friendships, how we could be better friends, right? Thinking about maybe some of our flaws as friends. Right, one of mine is that I feel like I could be, I think I'm generally a good friend in a lot of state. I think I could maybe work to spend more, I'm having trouble saying this because obviously there are certain limitations for the past few months now that have made friendships I think generally very difficult and that's sort of, I think, the impact in the way I'm looking at this issue. I feel like some of my strengths as a friend are that I'm, and we're going to see this, I think, come into play any other lecture we're going to, I'm going to offer with the School of Life, right? They say there are five different types of friends. I think I'm very good at offering consolation to friends. I'm very good at working, helping people work through problems. Like I'll do that with friends for hours. I got, I will suspend whatever else I'm doing. Like I will drop whatever I'm doing. I'll go, you have an issue. Let's talk about it. Or you have this new idea you want to execute on it. Okay, let's talk about it. Like I'm very good with, as that type of friend, I think that, again, we'll see you broke it down into five roles. I think, I guess ultimately, I would like to be a better friend and maybe initiating group hangouts. So if I know, I feel like I know I have friends who thrive in that environment and I just don't in the same way. So I feel like I could be better at bringing people together. Like my other friend who I mentioned earlier, who calls people like twice a week when he drives home, he's very good at networking. Like he's very good at bringing people together, even like different groups of friends together. And I think that's something I would like to get a little bit better at. I have a tendency, I have a small group of friends that I really think I care for very nicely. And I really tend to maybe overly focus on them. And I also need to maybe get better at like, not, yeah, I guess inviting myself to when they're doing things with their work friends. Or when they're doing things with like their, you know, some of my friends are really interesting hobbies, right? Maybe being more open to adopting a new hobby where I would meet their friends in that regard, right? So maybe I guess, and some of the things I'm realizing to might be because I'm a little more introverted. But I do think growing in those ways would help me flourish in friendships. Maybe having a couple more friends, meeting new friends could be something that I'm better at. That my friend who I use is kind of an example of this is very good at. I feel like he has a larger social network than me. Like significantly larger. Like larger to the point where like it gives me like I get anxious thinking about it. I'm like, I can't even imagine he got invited to 12 weddings in a year. I mean, I would, you know, you already hear my tone changing. Just the thought of that. I'm like, I don't want anything. I can't. I don't want to, I don't want to do that. First of all, how many suits do you own? You know, like, I don't know. Anyway. But I should strive for that a little bit more, I think. I mean, 12 weddings is a lot though. I mean, that's, you know, all in all of them were friends. So I got to understand if you have like a huge family, right? They were all friends. I mean, so again, we all have different ways of being here. But I would like to expand my social circle a little bit more by at the very least being somebody who, again, creates more of a group setting versus like having three people over. And I love that. But I think I could also learn to love, again, being more of that networking type person. And I think that could be meaningful, right? Because I think ultimately we're going to discuss today too, like, there's different levels to friendship for our style. Right? He's a little more clear about making levels. Whereas the School of Life simply is saying, okay, there's five different categories of friends. And we kind of all have and need all different types of friends, which I agree with too. And I also feel like I don't do that. And I feel like all of my friends sort of fill those five categories in different ways to different degrees. So again, I'm working this out loud. I'm working this out out loud because I hope you'll do the same, right? I hope you'll be able to hear these lectures and sort of like start looking at your friendships and looking at your friends and seeing how you, again, maybe you would like to have as I do maybe a couple more friends. Maybe meeting new people is a good way of, but I actually get better at meeting new people. I think that's a good goal for me. Whereas I feel very comfortable with my close friends that I'm good at maintaining those relationships. We have meaningful conversations. We offer help to each other. We're constantly teaching and learning from each other. We're constantly encouraging each other. And maybe you need more friendships like that. Like maybe your perspective on these conversations should be, you know what? I really want more people in my life who I can connect to in this way, right? This teaching, learning, guiding, consoling way versus, and we'll see this in the school life, I say versus like the fun friends. I need more fun friendships. I need to change some of my current, let's say, more consoling friendships into, all right, let's just relax and have fun a little bit. That's another goal for me as well, I think. Having my friendships now be a little bit more lighthearted. I think it would be an interesting thing too. As we sit down and sometimes have a tendency, we really just talk like about issues. Like what would, I think if you're applying the water like, wow, these guys are very serious. And that's good too, I think, to a large extent, but it's like, you know, we got to relax a little bit too. And that's one type of friend for the school of life is this fun friend, right? Like someone you can be silly with. Like maybe that's, I think also a good direction for me to grow in. So on that note, a little bit of an intro to this lecture that happened spontaneously. Let's get into Senica for some bibliotherapy. Again, a lot of these will be about friendship. I think he takes friendship very seriously, as I said, the ancient Greeks do. And we'll see what we get from this. So give me one second here, please. Just a scroll. All right, so here we go. So therapy focused on friendships. And again, also some of these quotes will apply to other types of relationships too. So please keep that in mind, right? First one, it is faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one. So how do you trust people? Do you trust people? Why do you not trust people? What information do you trust people with? What information do you never trust people with? First one. But if you can consider anyone a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken. And you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means. So you should be able to trust someone you call a friend with everything. It's a heavy ask here from Senica, right? And again, maybe it'll kind of encourage us to consider ways we should be more open with our friends. Next one. Those who begin to be your friend because it pays will also stop because it pays. So why do we even start being friends? What are our intentions when we're sustaining our friendships? Is it because we're getting something out of it? All right, that's not a true friend maybe for Senica. So this is like, you know, to use a school example because here we are, the person that you're friendly with only because they gave you the homework. And maybe that's not a real friend. We don't want to use that word. Number four, I think now. Much harm is done even by one who holds you back, especially since life is so short. And we make it still shorter by our unsteadiness. But for me, this calls to mind like do your friends encourage you in a truthful and healthy way? Or are they kind of, you know, are they overly negative? Are they not willing to see that things are possible for you, for themselves, for the group? Right, that's a form of holding people back. I am not your friend unless whatever is that issue concerning you is my concern also. I liked that a lot. And I think this is one way in which I'm a good friend. I don't dismiss anything my friends say, like if it matters to you, I'm going to at least see what's going on. I'm going to ask about it. I'm going to give my attention to it. Now, of course, I might not agree or whatever in regards to its importance or in regards to what you're saying. But the point is, if it concerns you, it concerns me. One of the nicest quotes, my great aunt once said, this is at a dinner, was like growing up, she said, the sense of community she had was such that like, she never had a problem. Right? Because it was never only her. problem. She was never alone in the problem. Of course, she had problems, right? But the idea was that the community was so tight, they embodied this so well that it was like, you never felt alone with your problems. And I think that's a great part of friendship, right? It's like you should be able to sit with people and we're going to encounter this idea with Tick-N-Ton a lot in this next coming lectures. Like you want to be able to sit with people when they're suffering and console them. That's a huge part of loving people. Making what concerns them concern you in an authentic way, right? Next quote, "Why need I keep back any words in the presence of my friend? Why should I not regard myself as alone when in their company? Once again, back to the idea of trusting friends, right? I like he's like questioning himself here. I'm not sure if he wrote this for himself or one of his students. Sennaka's famous for writing letters to his students. I was probably a letter to a student. That's a great idea. Let it go a little bit. Be comfortable we have to strive for that with friendships maybe. Those who regard themselves only and enter upon friendship for this reason reckon wrongly. Let's not make room for selfishness in friendships, right? Of course, be yourself. It's important. Have a self. Take care of yourself obviously, right? But selfish reasons for friendships, they're not going to be sustainable or healthy. All right. So that's going to be our bibliotherapy for the day. And we'll move on into some lectures on readings here a little bit more on friendship. Okay, so this conversation and brief lecture, as I said, will be focused on friendship. If you're in the class, we're looking at number 12. This is from the School of Life, the Book of Life section of the website. It's chapter four, sociability and friendship. And when I think the essay does really nicely is talk about how and why we need to consider purpose when we're pursuing friendships. Right? So as the essay says, it opens up with the question, right, what is the purpose of friendship? And ultimately, what Deboutan is arguing, I think, or what the School of Life is arguing, is kind of similar to what Aristotle presented to us in regards to friendship. So for Aristotle, there were three different types of friendships. The one that we should try to cultivate the most, the one that is of the greatest value, we could say is like the level one friendship. That's sort of, let's say, a friendship based on virtue, where we admire the other person, right? Not for their status or their wealth or for their even necessarily their reputation, right? We value them for really who they are. And that's maybe like an esoteric thing, right? Because how do you define who you are? But it really boils down to virtue for Aristotle, right? I think we can admire someone for their confidence. We can admire someone for their honesty. We can admire someone for, let's say, you know, a whole myriad of reasons that would almost sort of transcend the more like, let's say materialistic, superficial things I mentioned a few minutes ago, right? Things like status, wealth. These are not reasons to be friends with people. Right? Even, let's say, you know, let's go as far as to say that this friendship doesn't exclude things like having a good time or convenience necessarily, but those are not the real basis for the friendship. Right? This is someone with whom you have a really profound connection based on a set of virtues. So those are the best types of friends, right? Those are the best types of friendships. The second type for Aristotle are friendships characterized. Moreover, let's say a sense of fun, a sense of enjoyment. Maybe you have similar hobbies or the same hobbies. Maybe you go out to the same places and you get along with these people very well. The third type of friendship would be one that I think Aristotle would argue that, you know, we should pursue the least. This would be sort of friendships out of usefulness, right? So this is sort of the friend, the example I give a lot in this context is like, you get a ride with them to work or to school. And then when you get there, you kind of like forget about each other, right? Your own only real thing kind of sustaining their friendship is sort of an exchange of something useful, right? So it doesn't really get to a conversation about who they necessarily are at their core. You don't even really spend like fun, fun times together. And it's really again, just based on this sort of like almost like a commercial kind of exchange to an extent, right? So I want to make a couple points on this. I don't necessarily think we should limit ourselves. So by that, I mean, a level, let's say a level three friendship can turn into a two or a one. Same thing goes for a two, right? Can turn into a one as well. I think to a large extent, and this is something that the School of Life raises nicely. They, I think they give us a little bit, a little bit of a different perspective. They characterize five different types of friendships. That I think kind of generally fall to some extent into our styles three categories, but on the less, I think we do need all different types of friendships, right? I think what Deb Uchon in the School of Life is offering us in this essay isn't saying, you know, you want all one type of friend. He's saying or they're saying you want and you will likely have different types of friendships that will fall into, you know, somewhere into these five categories. And they don't have to even necessarily exclusively fall into only one, right? I'm sure we'll all, as we're hearing this lecture, hopefully, and as you do the reading, we'll find that we have friends that kind of fall into both categories or maybe, you know, if we again use kind of percentages, 85% of this friendship is really type two, but we saw 15% where it's type three, just for our given sake, right? So we want to, really, for the School of Life, not so much say to ourselves, I only want this type of friend. We want to acknowledge why certain people are in our lives. We want to cultivate a sense of purpose around why we might continue pursuing our friendship, why we might want to get to know someone a little bit differently, right? We want to have a sense of purpose in our friendships. And for the School of Life, it's really necessary to ensure that the people in our life are in our life for a good reason. Right, we talked about the seriousness of friendship in the meditation lecture. And I think this really plays nicely to that idea, right? Like to really use the word friend, we should know why we're using that word, right? To briefly connect to for a moment to Albert Camus the plague, when he's describing this city, right, that it will eventually be stricken by the plague. He's basically saying, everyone there is kind of numb, right? The things that should wake us up in life and give life, it's meaning from friendships to romantic relationships to familiar relationships. These are the things that should imbue our lives with the sense of awakeness, the sense of freshness, excitement, right? Not only, of course, but these are like the real, some of the most important sources of meaning in our lives. And yet, according to Camus in the city of Iran, people loved, as he said, without knowing much about it, they just kind of got it to habits, right? So I hope this conversation is like, should kind of awaken us to see, are we just continually perpetuating relationships without, let's say, an awakeness and a sense of being awake in regards to the reason and the purpose, and that it's okay to think about these things. It's not rude or mean to consider how we use the word friend. It's not rude or mean to consider whether or not certain friendships fall into certain categories. And at the end of this essay, he will, he uses the word ruthless, so maybe there is a sense that God don't love the word mean, but maybe there's a sense that we need to be a little more ruthless in figuring out how we spend our time, figuring out how we're perpetuating certain friendships that maybe aren't serving a healthy purpose for us. Right? So for Camus, we can fight that idea that I think we should, that people in Iran loved not knowing much about it. We should know about the reasons why let's say we open ourselves up to friendships, the reasons why we open ourselves up to romantic relationships, and what we're offering these people and what we're offering us. So I hope this lecture in essay is helpful in this regard. So let's get into some of the specifics here, right? So the School of Life ultimately breakdown friendships into five different types of friendships. And again, we're keeping in mind that a lot of our friendships will likely be characterized, or let's say we'll fall into more than one of these things, right? So the first one is networking, the second one is reassurance, the third is fun, the fourth is clarifying our mind and the fifth is holding on to the past. So these are all various reasons. Right? So we have to develop a clearer picture of what friendship or, you know, a guy I hope is for specific friendships and also friendship more broadly is really for. Right? And of course, these are not the only five things they're saying these are at least, or they're at least five, right? Which I think is reasonable. So let's talk about networking first. So we're already hearing a little bit of that third type of Aristotle friendship, right? Based on let's say something based on usefulness, which again, I don't, I don't want us to interpret that as horrible simply because it's not, let's say, a preferred type of friendship, or the preferred type of friendship. It still can be very purposeful, very helpful, and it can be a healthy part of our lives. And I think the School of Life conveys that really nicely, right? Even the first sentence here. So firstly networking is a type of friendship. It is unfairly maligned. So we looked at it, or we look at it too negatively, right? We are small fragile creatures in a vast world. Our individual capacities are entirely insufficient to realize the demands of our imaginations. So of course, we need collaborators. complices who can align their abilities and energies with ours. I think that's a really healthy way of looking at networking too, right? I think even, you know, I'm not someone who's good at networking. So this is a type of friendship that I have to improve upon, right? And my own ability to cultivate it because I do agree with what they're saying here, right? This is not, let's say, at all, I don't think, you know, allowing others to, like, let's say, take advantage of our skills or use us for some of their purposes. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way, right? According to what the school life was offering, which I think really at the very least warrants are consideration. Okay. Networking friendships do not have to be, again, viewed in this negative way. And it gives some really interesting historical examples, right? He talks about Jason and the organotes, right? The legendary ancient Greek tale, right? We talked about the Captain Jason, who had kind of networked in order to assemble a band of friends, right, to accomplish his goal, not a bad thing. Right? He talks about, you know, other examples as well here. I'm, you know, I asked that you read it, of course, to see how you relate to these ideas. But other examples where you know what? Networking, putting together a group of people sharing an aim, working together, you know, not a bad thing. These ideas could change the world for the better, right? So it's not to diminish the value of this type of friendship. Let's acknowledge what it is. Let's see, again, maybe how we're relating to it currently in our lives and embrace it a little bit more if it's something that we've had a negative view of. The second type of friendship is one characterized by the reason of reassurance. So the school of life is telling us here, look, human condition, a lot of terror. Okay, we're always at least on the verge of something going wrong. It's great danger, disappointment, or what they offer us here. Okay, the reassuring friend gives us access to a very necessary and accurate sense of their own humiliations and follies or failures, right? And insight with which we could begin to judge ourselves and are sad and compulsive sides more compassionately. So I think the reassurance friend is characterized by what I think a time can really virtues, which is like, we're open with each other. Right? And again, I think this is like a positive take on commissaration a little bit, which is something I usually view quite negatively, right? But the reassuring friend, again, maybe is giving us a pathway to being more compassionate with ourselves by being open with us about what's going wrong with them or what they've messed up on. And I think, again, we want to keep in mind, I even, I will wear this mask often. Let's even look at it in that way. I'm doing some existential in this week and other class, existentialism in this week and other classes. They love the idea of the masks, right? These might even, all five of these might be masks that we all wear at various times in our lives in various friendships, right? So we all kind of should think about how we might be the networking friend, how we might be the reassuring friend, and how we might search that in others, right? The reassuring friend is going to be open with you. Look, I'm having a rough time too. And I do think that's a sign of a true sense of comfort with other people when you're willing to be open with them about your own failures. The third type is the fun friend, okay? For the school of life, life is constantly giving us lessons and they need to be serious. We always need access to people who we can trust enough to just kind of relax and be silly with them. Although we all, again, have different roles in life, one moment we might be a neurosurgeon, super serious, or we might be advising a company on some big decisions, or we might be super serious in our roles elsewhere. We need a friendship, or again, moments in friendships, we're going to kind of just be therapeutically idiotic. Just goof around, okay? They tell us the quote, "The front friend solves this problem of shame around important but unprestigious sides of ourselves." So people were not afraid to be silly with idiotic with, right? And they give some really interesting examples here. I've just moments where we're letting our guard down and we're using this type of fun as a mode of therapy. When we even think about some other topics we discussed with self-love, right? We need to sometimes just let ourselves be kind of goofy with ourselves. To not take life so seriously, I think it's a really important aspect of leading a happy life. And that fun, goofy friend can really be helpful. Or again, those fun, goofy moments with friends who might even be serious a lot of the time. Really are a necessary part of a healthy life and a healthy friendship. The next type of friendship, the fourth, is clarifying our minds. They tell us to a surprising degree, it is very hard to think on our own. As a result, many issues lie confused within us. We feel angry, but are not sure why. Everything is wrong with our job, but we can't pin it down. The thinking friend holds us to the task. They ask gentle but probing questions which act as a mirror that assists us with the task of knowing ourselves. Now this is where I, you know, I think philosophy comes into play all of your, you know, with all of these examples here, but this is the one where I, you know, I think it's maybe the most clear. But of course, it can be a philosophical task to learn how to be the fun friend, a profoundly philosophical task. Right, maybe it's the mantra of let go. Maybe it's discussions we're raising today. Maybe it's your acknowledgement that in order to achieve some inner freedom, you need to learn how to relax a little bit. Maybe the networking friend too, you know, you want to become more of that person. For me, that's a profoundly philosophical thing because I have to unpack some of the reasons why, let's say, I'm apprehensive about getting into networking more. I have to look beyond some of my own, let's say, potentially falsely held beliefs around what it means to be social. So all of these can be philosophical, but of course, I think this one really, at least the rarely so say this one sounds the most soocratic, right? Asking questions, helping people, you know, work through their thinking. And I think, you know, for all of these, right, we can maybe think about how our friends exhibit this behavior and how that example might help us exhibit this behavior when needed. In terms of being friends to ourselves and also, of course, friends with others. Because a lot of people are doing this class, as I think I mentioned in the last lecture, episode, whatever, was that philosophical meditation comes in handy not only for ethical self-cultivation, but should also help us ask people better questions, right? Because we're hopefully engaging with questions in a very intense way as a result of the class, right? So that's what the self-clification does, of course, what that is. But that also should help us in friendships helping our friends to clarify their minds. So I'll about ask you questions here. And again, any healthy relationship, romantic, friendship, family has to be based on questions. We should never, you know, let's say rely upon our assumptions and/or telling people how the relationship should be, right? We should have our own opinions that we can stand by, that we've examined, and then we should pursue what they need, what they want, how they feel through an authentic and kind application of questions. And we could do that while standing our ground very firmly, right? Of course, there's also a room for statements and relationships in certain moments, of course, right? But ultimately, I think this is a really interesting, well, let's say this type of friendship raises other questions that are very interesting, right? Let's go to the fifth one. Holding on to the past. School of Life Shares with us, a number of friends have nothing to say to whom we are now. But we keep seeing them, get a little bored in their company, right? And we're not wrong for keeping up with them. They embody a past version of ourselves from which we're now distant and yet still remain loyal. And help us to understand where we have come from, right? And what once mattered. They're not really super, let's say connected to who we are today, but not all of our identity is really contemporary, right? So we have an image of who we were and maybe there are parts of that that we do want to hold on to, although they might not be, let's say, the most important aspects of what we do in our daily lives. These friends from the past could be important reminders, maybe, right? We could share memories with them that are meaningful that when we return to them, like they give us a sense of joy. Now, why bother with this, right? Why bother thinking about these five, let's say, different types of friendships or let's even call them different modes of friendships and different reasons for continuing a friendship or starting a friendship? Okay. They share with us. This is a really nice idea. The fact of getting a bit more precise about what we're trying to do with our social lives is that we're likely to include that in many cases. We're spending time with people for no truly identifiable reason. Okay. These proto friends share none of our professional ambitions or interests. They aren't reassuring and may indeed be secretly really very excited by the possibility of our failure. We can't be cathartically silly around them and they aren't in the least bit interested in furthering our or their path to self-knowledge. They are like so many of the people in our social lives. Simply in our orbit as a result of an unhappy accident, we have been too sentimental to correct. This is where Santaica comes in, right? I think we almost feel him with this. Like the idea that friendship is serious. It shouldn't just be a result of a happy accidents. We should know Again, back to Kamu for a minute, we shouldn't know about the way we love, the why of our love, the reasons for our loving. We shouldn't love without knowing much about it. We should cultivate knowledge and wisdom around these ideas. Okay. And then he offers this, which I, or the school life offers this, which I remarked upon earlier, right? We should dare to be a little ruthless. Getting rid of acquaintances is not a sign that we have lost belief in friendship. Again, even use that word acquaintance is important here, right? To make that distinction as Seminka did too. It's evidence that we are getting clearer and more demanding about what a friendship could be. In the best way, the price of knowing where friendship is for may, I'm sorry, what friendship is may be a few evenings in our own company. Not a bad thing. And I also think that this closing note works nicely for romantic relationships, which our next lectures will be a little bit more about at-ros, right? Have a vision of what you would like in a relationship. That's a really good exercise, right? Whether you're single and maybe you're looking for a relationship or maybe you're single and you're not looking for a relationship, you're just really focusing on yourself at the moment, focusing on your friendships, right? Or just looking to meet interesting people, right? Or maybe you're in a relationship, right? Still, what do you want for the rest of your relationship? What do you want for the future of your relationship? What do you want now for your relationship? Crafting an image, as he's saying here, of the reasons for friendship, crafting an image of, let's say, some of the main reasons for maintaining a romantic relationship, for pursuing a romantic relationship. What would be the key virtues? The key habits, the key characteristics, the key things in common, the things that you would be open to maybe disagreeing on, right? These are all really interesting. At the very least, I think these are really interesting conversations to have. And I also think to a large extent, right? Especially when we're trying to meet people and/or when we're working to cultivate and maintain healthy friendships or romantic relationships, we need to have, at least somewhat of a vision. We shouldn't be, again, back to Camel a little bit, but to use sort of a cliche or maybe turn it on its head a little bit, right? I don't think we should strive for blindness. We should try to see other people for who they truly are. And that's a good thing. We should try to see ourselves for who we truly are. We shouldn't love ourselves without cultivating self-knowledge first because there are ways that we need to grow. Or they're likely, very, you know, there are likely ways that we need to grow that could benefit us and others. And we shouldn't be blind to those things. Now, does love require some blindness? Yes, it does. And I think to say blindness, too, we could even define that as numbness in a way, right? There are times where we're going to feel angry or we're going to feel upset. And we're not right to feel those things. So we should be blind to those emotions, right? Because we can acknowledge, you know what, this is just me not seeing clearly or we could acknowledge. This was this was this was must of, you know, I'm going to trust them because I love them. This was not their intentions. I'm going to, you know, be blind to or deaf to what they just said. There are moments where insensitivity after thinking about it is helpful in a relationship, I believe. That's all philosophy, too, right? Training ourselves on how to engage with our emotions effectively, how to hear our own thinking, how to truly engage with others. We're hearing them and we're seeing them attentively, right? That being said, we don't want to pursue that. We want to enact it when it is necessary. So I hope this is helpful. And thank you for listening.