Unconditional friendship

Inspiration and insight come from many sources, including literature. While rereading Anne Perry’s “Defend and Betray” (a great series about Victorian London detective William Monk), I came across this particularly discerning paragraph about the type of friend we all want to have and be:

“In fact there had been moments when he had felt a kind of friendship for her more totally honest than he had for anyone else…She saw him without any deluding mists of admiration, self-interest or fear for her own position, and there was something extraordinarily sweet and comfortable about a friend who knows you and accepts you at your worst, your most bitter, or defeated, who sees your emotional ugliness naked and is not afraid to call it by name, and yet does not turn from you or allow you to cease to struggle, who wills your survival as precious.”

We all want one friend who knows our best, our worst, our secrets, our celebrations, our tragedies, all our shades of gray and loves us anyway. We all deserve at least one friend of this caliber. And at the same time, we should aspire to be this type of friend to those who need us to be.