Now to the question: Which of the three is good? It appears that type A is good, but it is not as useful or joyful as the other types. Type B is good, yet it falls short of longevity and quality. Type C too is good, but how long one enjoys only pleasure in life? How many jokes can a person take in a day? And does it give the same pleasure as it gave to him in the beginning? Doesn’t he reach a saturation point, a mental and emotional exhaustion? Where he would rather prefer to be left alone to himself? Would prefer to shed a tear inside rather than go on laughing at the follies of the world?
In close observation, it would be revealed that all these type differences are not watertight compartments. They overlap with each other. A relationship started on the basis of usefulness may also get elevated to the status of virtue in due course. Similarly a virtuous friendship also could soon impart usefulness and pleasure. It would be an ideal package to have all the three together. But you see my friend, how difficult it is to form relationships?
Virtue-based relationships are formed mostly during childhood, schooldays. Sometimes later, at college days, when we live in a state of blissful ignorance, or rather, fool’s paradise. But once one tastes the coldness of reality and learns to conduct oneself a successful professional, the circumstance demands one to have friendships on the basis of usefulness/pleasure. Be it sharing a cigarette or going for a picnic or deciding to invest in the same company shares together. Though I said earlier that it is capable of developing a virtue out of it in due course, mind you, it is not a virtue in itself. Virtue-based friendship is fantastic for this reason: it lasts till the end of this universe! Though it is disheartening to realise that most of the virtue-based relationships is formed during our young, immature (ironically because we were thinking at that time that we were the most matured of the lot!), developing stage–the mind then was remarkably uninhibited and the ears listened without prejudice and the tongues twisted smoothly to the words that flew out from the bottoms of hearts–it is gladdening to know that value-based friendships are also formed in a professional/political/materialistic milieu. Often less in number, it is formed, surprisingly, in a short span and lasts till eternity! That telepathic, intuitive Richard Bachian understanding works out here: “You know your friend in a moment, than your acquaintances in a life time.”
So far so good about friends and friendships. . . All of a sudden, do I sound cynical a bit? Perhaps (my favourite word in defining relationships) yes! But why?
Frederick Neitzsche feels that the right kind of friendship occurs only when we realise the enemy within and without. Hence when Aristotle said, “O friends, there are no enemies,” Neitzsche in his very characteristic way retorted by saying, “O enemies, there are no enemies.” While Aristotle implied that friends are really enemies in disguise, Neitzsche conjectured to the contrary that enemies are friends in disguise! He was contemptuous of our tendency to give only to our friends. But not to our enemies.
