Even if you’re not especially fond of waking up early and coming to school, I imagine that seeing your friends is one thing you look forward to.  That is as it should be.  Friendship is one of the great joys of being human.  

But if I were to ask you, what are your friendships useful for, I suspect (or at least I hope) you’d give me a funny look, like it’s a silly question.  That is also as it should be.  

In fact, if someone said that they valued my friendship because it was useful to them—because I give them money when they need it, or because I introduce them to important people, or because I give them nice gifts on their birthday, or because I help bail them out of trouble—I’d be pretty disappointed.  I want them to be my friend for the sake of simply being my friend.

C.S. Lewis wrote quite a bit about friendship and he observed that:

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

You and I don’t need friends to stay alive – but, as Aristotle suggested, it may be the case that having friends is still a matter of survival, since:

“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”

So, perhaps in that way, friendship is a most useful thing—not so much something that keeps us alive, but as something for which we keep on living…or at least something that helps us wake up early on a Monday.

We’ll give some more thought to friendship throughout the week, but for now, enjoy the time learning with your friends, and…

Have a wonderful day.