“Type soulfriends, or even worse “soulmate” into an internet search engine and some of the most syrupy aphorisms on friendship will be returned for your edification… the trouble with this sentimental

The title of the book is The meaning of Friendship by Mark Vernon.

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The Spirituality of Friendship ‘Of the things which wisdom provides for the blessedness of one’s whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.’ Epicurus Spirituality is something of a buzz word. As Jeremy Carrette and Richard King argue in Selling Spirituality:

Spirituality is something of a buzz word. As Jeremy Carrette and Richard King argue in Selling Spirituality: the Silent Takeover of Religion, it is a concept that, first, has become highly individualised – it’s about ‘me’ and ‘my’ quality of life – and, second, has been adopted by organisations from car manufacturers to art galleries, with churches laying claim somewhere in between, whose pri mary aim is commercial – increasing audiences and shifting products.

The spirituality of friendship is similarly something to be rather sceptical about, at least at first. If asked what it might mean probably the most common answer would have to be soul friendship. But the idea of soul friendship is one almost irredeemably ‘taken over’ by maudlin, marketable associations too. Type ‘soul friends’ (or even worse ‘soulmate’) into an internet search engine and some of the most syrupy aphorisms on friendship will be returned for your edification: ‘A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys’, ‘You are my fire, my titanic ocean’, etc. The search will also throw up hundreds of dating agencies, websites promoting relationships with ‘celebrity soulmates’, and others that proffer advice on things like ‘soulmate health’. Such is the commercial value of the notion that one electronics manufacturer has named its MP3 music player SoulMate. The trouble with this sentimental haze and commodification is that it cheapens an idea of enormous human value: the spirituality of friendship is not something that can simply be ceded to the market. It must be recovered because it captures the attitude best

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apparently intractable distance between human beings collapses until it is vanishingly small. And the phrase also includes the vital qualifier that, for all the closeness, soul friends still recognise that they are separate individuals. Each is ‘another self’ to the other. Unlike Narcissus who looked in the mirror and saw only himself, the source of the delight of soul friends is that they recognise not only themselves but another human being. ‘The essence of friend ship lies, I suggest, in the exercise of a capacity to perceive, a willingness to respect, and a desire to understand the differ ences between persons,’ said the philosopher Richard Wollheim. Friends may share an intensity of feeling for each other, includ ing joys and sorrows – ‘I am happy because she is happy’, ‘I am sad when he is sad’ – alongside successes and failures: they bask in each other’s reflected glory, or languish in each other’s mis takes. But they never seek to consume each other or fall into a perpetual embrace. This is one aspect of spiritual friendship that the marketplace conveniently overlooks: its sentimentalisation of soulmateship arises by conflating that with the union to which romantic love aspires, a trope which commercially plays much better than advocating difference. The human value of the former, and the cash value of the latter, is illustrated in the way soul friends behave and lovers are portrayed. Soul friends’ qualified need of each other, in the sense of respecting each others’ individuality, means that they do not mind being physically apart for periods