***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof*** Copyright © 2015 Daniel Klein "It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." --Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Philosopher (1803-1882), Transcendentalist I copied this one into my notebook while I was still in college, long before Iwas old enough to have an old friend. But I may have been prescient: At thetime I had just made a new friend, a fellow philosophy major named Tom Cathcartwho has remained my closest friend for going on fifty‑seven years now. Through the ages, animpressive number of philosophers-- from hedonists to transcendentalists--haverated friendship as life''s greatest pleasure. Not sex, not extreme sports, noteven coming up with an original philosophical insight--but simply having a verygood friend. Epicurus and Aristotle thought so, so did Montaigne and Bacon,Santayana and James. It is a long and impressive list. Given that doingphilosophy is one of the most introverted occupations imaginable, it isfascinating that these folks valued companionship so much.

Perhaps it takesbeing a solitary person to fully appreciate the pleasures of friendship. Of course, there are some philosophers who hold a cynicalview of friendship. The French master of maxims, François de La Rochefoucauld(1613-1680), wrote, "What men have called friendship is only a socialarrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services givenand received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involvedpropose to derive a steady profit for their own self‑love." Yes, we all have had relationships like that--relationshipsthat turned out to be more about manipulation than companionship, more aboutbeing treated as a means to an end than as an end itself. But true, open, andtrusting relationships exist also. I know this to be true in my most valuedfriendships and I have the incomparable privilege of being married to someone Itrust with my life. An insidious form of La Rochefoucauld''s cynical appraisal of friendship is inthe air lately. It is called "setting boundaries," and mental health tipstersfrom Dr.

Phil to the editors of PsychologyToday swear by it. The idea is that you should consciously set limits onwhat you are willing to do with and for your loved ones; that way you will notget riled or burned in your relationships. They tell us to set boundaries onwhat we are willing to sacrifice for our friends, what we will tolerate intheir behavior, even what we talk about with them. That way we will havehealthier, more peaceful friendships. In Psychology Today''s "10 Tips for Setting Boundaries and Feeling Better," they list as number 5:"Understand the laws of reciprocity--The best way to receive support, love andfeelings of satisfaction and contentment is to lend it out, offer your help,donate your time, reach out to someone you love." In other words, base your relationships on the commercialmodel of quid pro quo : If you do forme, I''ll do for you. It sounds like La Rochefoucauld''s "social arrangement, amutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received."Is that what we want to mean by "friendship"? Recently, a friend of mine told me that she had worked out atidy and workable formula for sustaining her marriage even though she and herhusband had been growing further and further apart for many years.

She saidthey no longer shared the same values; in fact, they saw just about everythingin the world so differently that it was impossible to have anything butcontentious conversations with each other. But they had three children and shefelt it was incumbent upon her to keep the marriage going. Hence her formula,which consisted of setting extreme boundaries on what could and could not bediscussed and at what points they would temporarily withdraw from each other.It sounded to me like something one might read in a business manual on how tokeep antagonistic employees from gouging each other''s eyes out. My friend askedme what I thought of her formula and I replied, honestly, that it sounded goodto me, as long as she was willing to completely give up on genuine intimacy. Surprisingly, my friend was taken aback by my comment. Shehad not thought about her situation in those terms. She had been living withoutgenuine closeness for so long that she seemed to have forgotten how much sheactually valued it and longed for it.

And no "boundaries" formula was going tochange that; indeed, it would only codify a way to live without the possibilityof closeness. She realized that what she ultimately needed to decide was if shewas willing to live without intimacy for the rest of her life. But back to Emerson''s thoughts about the joys of an old friendship. I knowwhereof he speaks. Tom and I have kept in close touch-- daily touch since theadvent of email--over the decades. Once or twice a year, we go off together fora few days, stay in a B&B or hotel, and basically just hang out. We talk.We go to a movie.

We eat out. We talk some more. It is a treat and a privilege. Over these years, we have gone through the rough passages ofour respective lives with each other''s counsel and support. The good parts,too, of course. And some of our long, heady discussions on philosophical topicshave taught me more than I learned in any classroom. But if I were to pick outthe most ecstatic times we have shared, those would be the occasions when wewere pickled with goofiness, when we reduced each other to giggling fools. Wetrust each other enough to be able to be seriously stupid together.

Totaldumbos. And in the midst of so much laughter, there are sometimes moments whentime seems to stop for a delirious rendezvous with the Eternal Now. "Our language has wiselysensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to expressthe glory of being alone." --Paul Tillich, Theologian (1886-1965) As much as I cherish the Joys of genuine companionship, I do love the glory ofsolitude. This is a pleasure that has deepened for me with age. Often, solitudecan fill me with peacefulness and a simple gratitude for being alive.

Sittingalone in the back of our little house on a summer''s day, a field of long grassand wildflowers before me, I revel in the mere act of breathing in andbreathing out. On her trips to the vegetable garden, my wife sometimesoffers me an amused smile as she passes by. Once, a few years ago, she asked meif I was thinking deep thoughts out there in my chair. I happily confessed thetruth: I didn''t have a single thought in my head, deep or shallow. That was asubstantial part of what made it so delightful. Indulging in solitude is certainly selfish, but I do notthink it is egotistical. I don''t sit there congratulating myself on being me.If I congratulate myself about anything, it is on just being.

It is a treat tobe able to appreciate simply being alive and usually that treat is notavailable when I am in the company of others. It tends to get lost in thecrowd. Nonetheless, I am not so sold on solitude as was Henry DavidThoreau, the American philosopher who spent months on end alone on Walden Pond.He, apparently, did have deep thoughts deep in the woods. Wrote Thoreau: "Inever found a companion that was so companionable as solitude." No, I value my time with good friends too much to go thatfar. But Thoreau does get me thinking about an activity that lies betweensolitude and time spent with a truly companionable friend, and that is timespent with people when intimacy is not an option. There is a lot of that in ourlives--for example, a party, the kind where people flit from group to group andshmooze amiably, often entertainingly, but not really personally.

At suchgatherings, it is nearly impossible to feel even an intimation of intimacy. I prefer solitude to that. This may well be an old man thingthat comes from a sense of time running out and not wanting to waste a momentof it. I would rather spend my remaining time breathing in and out in my chairbehind the house than spend it being the life of a party. I have noticed that as Snookers gets older, he tends to spendmore time alone, too. Rather than go for a walk with me, he often prefers toremain lying beneath a spreading maple tree with his head held up, sniffing thepassing scene, occasionally wagging his tail, perhaps in response to anintriguing smell. Does this mean that in our old age, Snookers and I arewithdrawing from the world? Letting go of the activities and encounters thatonce enriched our lives so that we can now pass gracefully to a world ofnothingness? I don''t know. But I do know that sitting alone out in the backyardmy life can feel very rich indeed.

Albert Einstein expressed this late‑in‑life phenomenonbeautifully when he wrote, "I live in that solitude which is painful in youth,but delicious in the years of maturity." "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." --Aristotle, Greek Philosopher (384-322 bc) If Aristotle had had a clue to how many relationships he would wreck with theseten simple words, he might have reconsidered composing them. In comparison tothis version of Ideal Love, our garden‑variety love affairs and marriages seema pale shade of drab. And inevitably, along with drab comes discontent: "Wejust don''t seem like a single soul, honey. So let''s call it quits." I was already a Soul‑Mate Romantic when I copied that linefrom Aristotle.