One Pulse More Of Firm Endeavor

" I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which i draw from this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself wherof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

i was just perusing through Emerson's thoughts on friendship that i have in my book of his essays and poems. Friendship is synonomous with tough love & it is worth every ounce of pain and turned cheek we must endure, if it is rooted in truth. True friendship will stand the test of time..........time will ensure trial by fire to prove its tenacity.

But in the same breath....Emerson also simultaneously contradicts himself

" All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beatiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual dissapointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted."

To hold the highest of standards, yet be humble enough to know one's own faults and forgiving enough to graciously accept the shortcomings of others.

This is friendship.