Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you “Who” you are.
In this essay, we examine friendship and distinguish it from the deeper bond of true friendship.
All enduring human relationships must be founded upon either friendship or true friendship.
Human relationships give rise to rights and obligations. Friendship and true friendship are distinct forms of relationship, each carrying its own rights. Because their nature differs, so do the rights they entail. It is therefore essential to understand the distinction.
Imposing the obligations of true friendship on an ordinary friend, extending the intimacy of friendship to a mere acquaintance, or speaking of brotherhood to someone with whom no common ground has yet been established does not strengthen relationships. On the contrary, it draws both people into a bond of rights and obligations that does not truly exist between them.
Let us first establish two important points.
The first concern is identity.
The Human has two kinds of identity: an essential inner identity and a non-essential inner identity rooted in the external world.
Essential inner identity belongs to those whose inward identity exists independently of the external world.
Non-essential identity belongs to those whose inward identity depends upon the external world.
The second concerns friendship and true friendship.
Friendship establishes a shared inner ground and a shared face through common ground in the external world.
True friendship is an inner dwelling (hāne) and an inward face (wajh) that do not depend upon common ground in the external world.
With these distinctions established, we can turn to the subject itself.
Both friendship and true friendship extend beyond physical proximity and external connections. Each establishes a shared ground through mutual acceptance.
Let us begin with friendship.
For two people to grow close, occupy similar positions, or spend a considerable part of their lives together is not enough to establish the common ground of friendship. This ground is formed only when two people move beyond their external circumstances and connections to develop a shared inner face.
Sharing the same environment or having similar interests is not enough either. Such things may bring people closer, but they do not yet constitute friendship.
Two people may sit at the same table, enjoy the same things, laugh at the same events, and remain in each other’s company for years. Yet none of this necessarily means that they hold a place of friendship in each other’s lives. For the place of friendship is inward. External relationships are expressions of togetherness grounded in this inner place. Togetherness becomes friendship only to the extent that it has an inward counterpart.
In the classical classification, three kinds of relationships exist between people. These three kinds reveal why people draw close to one another and the foundations upon which their relationships endure. Every relationship finds its basis and its possibility of continuity in one or more of these foundations.
The first is a relationship based on benefit and self-interest.
A person may form a relationship with another because of the benefit they receive. This benefit may be material, spiritual, social, or personal. Helping someone with their work, providing an opportunity, meeting a need, or making life easier can all give rise to such a relationship.
In this kind of relationship, people are drawn to one another largely because of the benefits they provide. When those benefits disappear, the relationship weakens and may eventually end.
The second is a relationship based on shared tastes, preferences, and pleasure.
People also grow close because they enjoy the same things, share similar interests, or enjoy each other’s company. Through this, they establish a shared inner ground.
Listening to the same music, reading the same books, pursuing similar activities, or embracing a similar way of life can create closeness. Each person finds something familiar in the other. The pleasure of spending time together sustains the relationship.
Yet when tastes change, interests diverge, or the pleasure of being together diminishes, the relationship changes as well. This is because its foundation lies largely in shared preferences and the common inner experience they create, rooted in the external world. The third is a relationship based on shared virtues.
Here, what binds people together is neither the benefit they gain from one another nor the pleasure they experience together. They share an understanding of what is good, right, and valuable. They recognize moral qualities in each other that they respect.
In this kind of relationship, a person values another for who they are. The question is: Who is this person? It is their identity that matters. The relationship is grounded in the character of those involved and the virtues they uphold. For this reason, friendship founded upon shared virtues does not depend on changing circumstances or preferences.
Particularly in childhood and youth, benefit, self-interest, shared tastes, and pleasure play an important role in the friendships people seek and maintain. People are drawn to those who feel familiar, play and enjoy themselves with them, meet their needs, or give them a sense of belonging.
This is understandable in the early stages of human relationships. At first, people generally come to know themselves and others through the needs, desires, fears, and pleasures that drive them. Friendship takes shape within this understanding.
As a person matures, however, their reasons for keeping someone close begin to change. The mature Human begins to seek and choose those who bring value to their life and to their humanity.
Mature people build their relationships upon shared virtues and experiences refined through time. Here, lived experience is not simply the sum of years spent together or memories accumulated.
It is the process of being tested by life, letting go of certain things, enduring loss, confronting one’s mistakes, and coming to know oneself anew. It means remaining open to continual transformation while living by the enduring principles distilled from one’s experience.
Experiences refined through time arise when what a person has lived through finds expression in their character. Friendship between such people draws its strength from the changes these experiences have brought about.
In mature friendship, a person seeks to understand what the other values and, above all, the principles upon which they stand.
The essential principle of friendship is to desire what is good for one’s friend.
Being friends with someone does not necessarily mean genuinely wishing them well. People may remain in a friendship because they do not want to lose the opportunities it provides, the value they receive from the other person, or the place that person occupies in their lives.
In such relationships, it may seem that one desires one’s friend's good, while what is actually being protected is the continuation of one’s own desires and expectations.
What truly defines friendship is the ability to desire another person’s good independently of one’s own interests. This is an inward matter, not something determined by external circumstances.
A good friend cares about their friend's well-being. They do not wish to see them harmed. They do not feel obliged to overlook their mistakes or approve of every action merely to preserve the relationship.
A good friend seeks to distinguish between what their friend desires in the moment and what is genuinely good for them.
Yet to desire every kind of good for another, even the good one holds most intimately as one’s own, goes beyond friendship. This belongs to true friendship.
In friendship, a person cares for another’s good to the extent that they have made room for that person in their own life. In true friendship, however, the good of the other can no longer be considered separately from one’s own.
A true friend does not desire the other’s good merely out of a sense of responsibility. They experience that good as a matter of their own existence.
When the good of a true friend is at stake, one may reconsider even those things one has protected and regarded as one’s own.
True friends are those who can relinquish themselves for one another.
Contrary to what one might expect, a person capable of true friendship possesses a very strong sense of self. What they relinquish is by no means small, insignificant, or weak. The true friend’s sense of self is strong, and they relinquish it only for the sake of a true friend.
True friends love what the other loves and reject what the other rejects in matters of fundamental principle. In all their actions, they share an essential unity (ayniyyah). This unity goes beyond ordinary friendship.
Such unity does not mean that two people become copies of one another in their tastes, thoughts, or actions. The unity between true friends lies not in their outward resemblance, but in their being united through the same fundamental principles.
True friends are born for the same essential purpose and die for that same purpose.
This unity must be understood beyond emotional attachments and fluctuations. A true friend is one who stands upon their own essence and is united with another who stands upon theirs.
Two people may experience similar emotions in response to the same event, but this resemblance does not yet constitute true friendship. In true friendship, what is shared goes beyond the emotions that events evoke. It lies in the inner principle by which those events are judged meaningful or meaningless, valuable or worthless.
For this reason, true friends need not always be in the same place or share the same experiences. Even when they are far apart, they continue to live from the same essential ground.
True friendship is a bond of birth and death; ordinary friendship belongs, in part, to the circumstances of life.
Ordinary friendship may develop during particular periods of life, around shared needs and common interests. When the time spent together, the social environment, or those shared interests disappear, the friendship may change its form or come to an end.
True friendship, however, is not merely about accompanying someone through a particular period of life. It concerns the very question of human existence, from birth to death.
A true friend ceases to be merely someone who has been part of one’s life. They become part of the very principles that govern one’s life and death.
For this reason, the beginning and end of true friendship cannot be determined by dates on a calendar or by the outward circumstances of the relationship.
True friendship is a unity that extends from the very beginning to the very end of human existence.
A true friend is not simply someone who stands beside you today. A true friend is someone you cannot leave out of account when contemplating your own existence, someone whose presence remains decisive in your life, even in their absence.
True friendship, even when it arises within life's temporary circumstances, manifests a state of unity that cannot be confined to those circumstances.
A true friend gives life to a friend.
Consider the Human at their most helpless, most disheartened, most exhausted, utterly depleted, and alone. A true friend is the one who remains with you through all such moments, who is there for you, who gives themselves to you. Drawing on their own strength, they offer you a shoulder to lean on and do not hesitate to face whatever lies beyond.
There can be no true friendship where the acts of the Exalted Creator are not brought directly into that very ground.
In its highest meaning, true friendship is more than a closeness established by the mutual will of two people. Here, the Human is no longer in a relationship determined by personal desire or another's expectations.
The ground that makes true friendship possible is no longer something people establish for themselves and alter at will. The dwelling place of true friendship is a realm shaped by Divine acts, where the Human can transcend the limits of the self.
In this respect, true friendship goes beyond the choice of two people. It requires them to recognize that the principle binding them together is greater than their individual lives. Where this principle is absent, there may be closeness, attachment, and even a degree of love. Yet true friendship, in the sense intended here, cannot be said to exist.
The bond between true friends admits no suspicion, tolerates no betrayal, and allows no deception, not even the slightest.
This does not mean that true friends will never hurt one another or experience disagreements. But none of these can ever be a true friend’s intention.
True friendship is absolute nakedness.
However close people may be, they can still be mistaken and make errors. Yet in true friendship, the bond itself is not something to be renegotiated with every disagreement. Instead, it operates through the principle of calling one another back to the same essential ground.
When a true friend sees the other’s mistake, they do not reduce their entire being to that mistake. When disagreement arises, they do not turn the friendship into a calculation of personal interests. Rather, they look upon who their friend truly is and draw their friend’s gaze back to that very truth, with nothing concealed, utterly naked. Suspicion and betrayal have no place in true friendship because of the nakedness inherent in its nature. This trust is an inward acceptance that need not be proven anew at every moment. It is established upon shared essential principles.
Ordinary friendship requires none of this. It is a valid and valuable relationship within its own boundaries. It establishes a shared inner face from a more external ground, without bearing the wholeness that true friendship demands.
Trust between ordinary friends need not be constant or absolute. People may trust one another in certain matters while maintaining distance in others. They may enjoy spending time together, help one another, and wish each other well. Yet neither is expected to take responsibility for the entirety of the other’s life, nor should they be.
Ordinary friendship means making room for another person in one’s life through a shared inner face. Nothing more. True friendship, however, is to be born into life within a unified dwelling grounded in essence. Its shared inner face opens not from the outside, but from somewhere deeper within.
True friendship also has its own music, a music that makes itself heard.
To hear this music, words need not be spoken, explanations need not be given, and emotions need not be displayed. True friendship has its own harmony and melody.
When true friends come together, they can hear this harmony and these melodies in one another without speaking at length.
Silence does not extinguish this music.
Ordinary friendship is external. It forms from the outside inward and therefore lacks music rooted in essence.
An ordinary friend has no melody that can set another soul aflame.
The melody of a true friend burns, consumes, and strikes a blow.
In ordinary friendship, voices, words, shared activities, and time spent together adorn and enrich the relationship. People sustain their friendships by listening, sharing stories, doing things together, moving within the same social circles, laughing, crying, and enjoying one another’s company.
Yet they cannot make each other’s very being tremble. With a single word, they cannot lay an entire world to waste. With one beautiful exchange of intimate conversation, they cannot turn that world into a flourishing garden.
Paradise and hell lie beyond ordinary friendship. Both belong to those whose very essence makes them capable of true friendship.
For such a person, paradise is contained within hell, and hell within paradise, for as long as the period of trial endures.
To bear such a person, to enter into unity with them, exceeds the endurance of those who live with partial and narrow inner worlds.
Ordinary friendship requires a certain outward expression in the world. Places visited together, shared activities, conversations, and common memories sustain the relationship. The shared inner face draws its nourishment from these experiences.
Ordinary friendship comes into being on common ground, draws its sustenance from that ground, and ends when that ground disappears.
True friendship does not spill into the common ground. It need not occupy that ground at all. A true friend belongs to the innermost sanctuary, to the chamber of secrets, to the very heart of one’s being, within a private dwelling encircled by deadly swords and spears.
Ordinary friendship reveals itself through what people do together, the words they exchange, and the connections others can see. The friendship between two people becomes apparent in the places they share, their common experiences, and their conduct toward one another.
True friendship, however, cannot be brought entirely into the open, displayed before others, or proven through outward signs.
It may, of course, have a visible dimension. True friends speak, meet, help one another, and act together. Yet even without all these things, the true friend remains within the other’s inner dwelling. Even when absent, the friend is there. Their presence is inwardly acknowledged.
And if one seeks the ultimate expression of true friendship upon the common ground, let it be said that true friendship possesses something far greater.
For the sake of a true friend, one steps into the arena where life itself is at stake. Or two true friends enter that arena together and breathe life into those who have none.
A true friend feels no shame before another true friend. This freedom from shame finds its ultimate expression in the arena where life itself is at stake, where one gives life to those who have none.
The true dwelling of friendship lies beyond outwardly observable actions, in the inner home where two people accept one another. For this reason, true friendship need not be brought into the open. It need not draw its sustenance from common ground. At times, true friendship means reducing that common ground to smoke and bringing it to utter silence.
The essential dwelling of true friendship is the inner home, the very soul, life itself, and essential identity. Whoever you are in your essence, so is your true friend.
As stated at the beginning, there are two kinds of identity.
The first is dependent identity, formed inwardly upon the foundations of the external world.
The second is transcendent identity, inward in nature and independent of the external world.
The Human exists in different ways, depending on the foundations on which identity is established.
Dependent identity takes shape inwardly through psychological and social circumstances, remaining bound to the external world.
Transcendent identity, by contrast, reaches beyond these circumstances and the limits of one’s individual existence. It is an identity rooted within, independent of external conditions.
The distinction between these two identities concerns less the qualities a person possesses than the very nature of their inner being.
Dependent identity is an inward identity rooted in the external world, constructed and protected within the self. A person establishes this identity through preferences, habits, fears, desires, social conventions, and lived experiences. These influences shape their inner face, and they remain largely driven by their nafs.
These elements shape how a person perceives the world, relates to others, and finds a place within it. They may come to believe that these qualities constitute their entire being, and their identity becomes confined within them.
Within this narrow inwardness, they accept what conforms to their preferences, preserve their fears rather than overcome them, and let desires that do not arise from their deepest being measure their relationships, increasingly driven by ambition.
Ordinary friendship belongs primarily to dependent identity.
It arises when people with dependent identities find their particular qualities, desires, preferences, and ways of life compatible. They become friends with those who feel familiar. Shared characteristics and influences drawn from common external ground allow the relationship to begin and continue.
Ordinary friendship adds another relationship to a person’s existing life. It is an addition.
Its advantage is that a friend need not intervene in every aspect of one’s life. Their influence remains limited. Boundaries must therefore be respected. Within those boundaries, the experiences and exchanges arising from companionship can certainly be valuable.
But for one whose inner being is rooted in essence, nothing can simply be added to or removed from life in this way.
For this reason, the friend of such a person is brought to the threshold of true friendship. Whoever crosses that threshold is neither added to that inner dwelling nor can be removed from it.
One can only be born there or die there.
The one who is born encompasses all times through that birth. The one who dies becomes ka-ann lam yakun, as though they had never existed, never been born. They are reduced to nothingness.
Thus, closeness to one whose inner being is rooted in essence is a consuming fire, ātash-i sūzān. It belongs to the laws of life and death. It stands between being born anew and having never existed at all.
To be a friend to such a person does not require nourishment from common external ground.
That dependence belongs to dependent identities.
Let us repeat what is meant by dependent. It refers to an inward constitution shaped and narrowed by psychological and social patterns, partial impulses, preferences, fears, and desires.
This dependence cannot be explained by social class or personality type. However educated, cultured, or knowledgeable a person may consider themselves, they remain dependent for as long as their inner world is founded upon the external.
A person who defines themselves solely through acquired knowledge, defended opinions, personal tastes, or positions they wish to preserve, without questioning whether these are externally rooted, struggles to turn inward beyond them all.
The dependent person has no access to an inner being independent of the external world.
The dependent person has hidden things, concealed possibilities, and secrets shaped by the patterns connecting their outer and inner worlds.
Their friendships develop around these hidden things. Within them, they keep everything concealed. You cannot erase their self from those hidden places.
But the one whose essential inwardness is open has nothing to conceal and no concern with concealment. What they hold within their inner dwelling is a secret and a trust entrusted to their care.
For this reason, true friendship is governed by the consciousness of the secret and the sacred trust (amānah).
We shall not elaborate further on these matters or their distinctions.
Ordinary friendship ends when the things shared between people are exhausted. When the common environment, activities, pleasures, or mutual benefits that once brought them together disappear, when shared feelings fade, when their presence on common ground and the inner bond formed through it lose their meaning, when resentment enters into familiar habits, and weariness or even regret begins to emerge, friendship gradually weakens, ceases to function, and passes into the past.
As we have already stated, in true friendship, this is a matter of life and death. True friendship has no past that has simply passed away. Every moment shared with a true friend either remains alive or must be put to death, each one individually. There is no middle ground.
What has died has neither a grave nor a monument. It is as though it had never existed.
For true friends do not, in essence, die. What is put to death is an impostor, one who laid claim to what was not theirs, a falsehood. Nothing more.
None of this is required of ordinary friendship
Nor is any of this required in the ordinary friendships of those whose inwardness is rooted in essence. Yet those without such an essential inwardness can scarcely tolerate the distance maintained in these friendships.
A considerable part of friendship between dependent identities rests upon the continuation of what two people share. As these shared elements change, the relationship may also change. People can drift apart without resentment, blame, or denial of their shared past. Such friendships are comfortable. They can form with ease and be left behind just as easily.
We have already spoken of their advantages. Yet what matters here is understanding what is given and what is received. A misplaced sense of ease in these exchanges can bring about profound changes in a person’s life. We shall not elaborate on these matters either.
True friendship endures regardless of time and place. It lives; it does not die, and it is kept alive.
For true friends are of the same essence. They flow from the same spring and share the same source.
Being of the same essence does not mean two people have identical personalities, thoughts, or life stories. True friendship rests upon the same origin, the same fundamental principle beneath these differences.
People may live in different places, pass through different stages of life, remain apart, and undergo countless changes. Yet if their friendship does not depend solely on being together, physical separation cannot, by itself, destroy the bond.
True friendship survives even in the friend's absence because it was never established merely as an external relationship.
No human relationship reveals its true nature without being tested. Do not judge a relationship solely when everything is going well, when people are pleased with one another, or when they can satisfy each other’s needs.
Its nature becomes clear only after it has been tested by changing circumstances, unmet expectations, loss, the need to relinquish personal comfort, and other profoundly difficult human experiences that we shall not put into words here.
For it is through such trials that the foundation beneath a relationship's outward appearance is revealed.
True friends burn in the same fire. They drink their fill from the same water. They are bound to the same source of life.
To burn in the same fire does not mean experiencing pain in precisely the same way or responding identically to every situation. True friends do not regard one another’s suffering as something to be observed from the outside. One's suffering is equally the others'.
To drink from the same water means more than having similar needs fulfilled. It signifies the unity of the source that sustains life itself.
Thus, the essential bond of true friendship lies not in possessing the same things, but in belonging to the same source of life.
Ordinary friendship is an established bond, a partial attachment. When a person forms a friendship, they open a particular part of their life to another. What they share may vary in time, place, interests, emotions, and responsibilities.
Friendship establishes a bond between two people, but that bond need not encompass their entire essential being. This is precisely where its advantages lie. The one thing that invalidates these advantages is violating boundaries.
A boundary is violated when a partial bond is expected to enter the unity, intimate recognition, and inner dwelling that belong only to an essential bond, before the ground for such a bond has been established.
A person may give a friend a place in their life but must preserve what belongs to their own essential being.
Ordinary friendship is to say to another, “You may have a place in my life,” without declaring, living, or making the other live the claim, “You are my life.”
Life (ḥayāt) and modest restraint (ḥayāʾ) arise from the same linguistic root.
The restraint of ḥayāʾ must not be removed before an ordinary friend, nor may the boundaries be violated.
Ordinary friendship legitimizes the familiarity that arises from a shared inner face established on external common ground. Beyond that lies the boundary of ḥayāʾ. To cross it is a violation. It is to allow an assault upon one’s own life.
For is it not true that no one can do to a person what that person allows to be done to themselves?
Whoever violates this boundary has stolen from their own life and allowed their life to be stolen from.
A person admits a friend into a particular part of their life. They spend time together, share thoughts, extend a certain degree of trust, and seek help when necessary. Yet they are not obliged to build their entire life around that relationship.
Ordinary friendship is simply including another person in a life that remains one’s own.
In true friendship, there is no question of inclusion or exclusion. As we have already said, true friendship belongs to birth and death.
A true friend cannot be added to life.
A true friend is brought into being.
And to come into being is a matter of life and death.
Only those capable of cutting off the very branch upon which they sit can truly come into being upon this ultimate ground of life and death. The rest cannot relinquish the branches that support them. They cannot transform, nor can they bring about transformation.
In truth, words alone cannot adequately understand or explain any of this. We have merely pointed toward it.
Most people do not truly know one another. They are merely familiar with one another.
Seeing someone, hearing their voice, observing their behavior, and acquiring certain information about them does not mean that we know them.
People may become accustomed to one another’s visible qualities, learn to anticipate each other’s behavior, and develop mutual familiarity over time.
Familiarity is not the complete knowledge of another person. It is an acquaintance with their outwardly visible aspects. Such familiarity diminishes the sense of strangeness between two people, but it does not grant access to the other’s inner world.
The inner world can only be entered from within.
Everything that can be approached from within belongs to the Human’s most private inner dwelling. Life’s most difficult moments and experiences also test it.
Familiarity is the outward face that may prepare the way for friendship. It matters because it lets people begin to know one another, develop mutual trust, and build a shared relationship.
Seeing someone repeatedly, becoming accustomed to their behavior, and sharing experiences may create the conditions for friendship.
Yet familiarity is not friendship itself.
A person may have seen someone for years and still be no more than familiar with them.
Friendship requires moving beyond familiarity to establish a shared inner face.
This shared inner face may be established either from within or from without.
For the dependent person, it is established from without and remains bound to common external ground. For one whose inwardness is rooted in essence, it arises from within and belongs to the inner dwelling, independently of that external ground.
To see a person’s face a hundred times is still only familiarity.
A person’s face is what appears of them in the external world. Seeing it repeatedly makes that person recognizable, but recognition does not mean that their inner world has opened itself to us.
One may memorize another’s face, recognize their voice, and anticipate their movements. Yet one may still know nothing of what that person is bound to, what they turn away from, or the Truth in which they find themselves.
Nor can one necessarily discern whether their inwardness is essential or merely partial.
Yet the face of one whose inwardness is rooted in essence may be recognized even at the very first encounter. Ordinary friendship becomes possible not merely through knowing a person’s outward face, but through the revelation of their inner face. Yet this inner face also opens the question of whether the friend possesses an essential inwardness.
Ordinary friendship is a shared journey toward a third thing.
Two people, each setting out from their own life, turn toward something they share and undertake a journey around it. This common ground may be an idea, an activity, a purpose, or a shared experience.
Friends develop their bond by looking toward the same thing, talking about it, and letting one another’s perspectives influence them.
They need not understand everything in the same way. On the contrary, their differences in thought, and their willingness to reveal those differences to one another, may enrich the shared journey.
Ordinary friendship allows two distinct people to travel together along a particular path without abandoning their own entirely.
But when the foundation of this shared journey lies in their essential inwardness, it becomes a journey of unity.
The richness of the journey of unity is rooted in their very origin. A journey not grounded in unity remains dependent on common external ground. It is a journey through divided multiplicity, founded upon the external world.
Multiplicity comes afterward. Unity belongs to what precedes all things.
Only those who have lived this know the difference.
Ordinary friendship is like sitting in an empty chair. One person may rise from it, and another may take their place.
In this analogy, the chair represents the place a person makes for someone else in their life. In friendship, one gives another a particular position, spends time with them, establishes a bond, and shares a part of life.
Of course, every friend has a distinct personality and leaves behind particular memories. No two people are entirely alike.
Nevertheless, when a friendship ends, the place it occupied becomes vacant. The empty chair does not mean that every possibility associated with it has disappeared.
For this reason, an ordinary friend must always be regarded as someone occupying a chair.
In true friendship, however, when the true friend rises, the chair itself and the very foundation upon which it stands are destroyed.
If a true friend leaves the inner dwelling they have entered, that dwelling collapses. It falls into ruin and becomes desolate.
For the true friend’s place is not a space established beforehand, either inwardly or outwardly. That place came into being together with the very existence of the friend.
The loss of a true friend cannot be remedied. There is no replacement, no substitute, no equivalent.
For a true friend is not merely someone who occupies a particular part of your life. They are the one whose presence gives that part of life meaning, the one who makes you who you are.
Whoever loses a true friend also loses true friendship.
Indeed, the true friend is the very embodiment of true friendship.
Most people depart this world without ever finding a true friend.
Most people have ordinary friends, yet they do not know the boundaries of their friendships. Nor do they know how to live alongside their friends without violating those boundaries.
And while they are caught up in these relationships, hardly anyone recognizes that all of this is fundamentally a matter of identity.
People influence one another through the places where they resemble each other. This must never be forgotten.
Tell me who your ordinary friends are. Tell me who your true friend is. And you shall be told who you are.
That is the heart of the matter. There is no need to say more.