Introduction
You do not have to be a special person to make friends. Neither popularity, nor good looks, nor an outgoing personality is required in order to build lasting relationships with others.
The key is whether or not you want to be a friend to others. If you do, you can adopt specific attitudes and take certain actions that will make friendship a reality for you. If you want to be a friend, I can help you.
When Thomas Nelson's senior book editor, my friend Peter Gillquist, first approached me about writing a book on making and maintaining friendships, I was both surprised and honored. My first question to Peter was, "Why me?"
Peter revealed that he had attended a very special birthday party my dear friends had sponsored at the Los Angeles, Hilton, and he was impressed by the fact that friends of forty years or more had come to celebrate with me — and so honor me by their presence. I've often said that the secret of success is simply to last, and I guess these lasting friendships challenged Peter to believe there might be a helpful
Page 12
book on the vital theme of making and maintaining friendships.
I didn't take long to agree with Peter and to begin this fascinating project. You will note in this book my inexpressible appreciation for the way friends have related to me for these past few decades. These people are my most prized possessions, and in part, this book is my way of telling them so.
The ancient Hebrew writers spoke warmly and frequently of friendship. What a wonderful thought that King David of Israel was called "a friend of God." How beautiful was the friendship between Jonathan and David, between Ruth and Naomi. Jesus was called the friend of sinners, and He was criticized for it.
What is a friend? Ask the question to ten different people, you'll probably get ten different answers. If we expanded our poll, we might discover as many definitions of friend as there are friends themselves.
Think for a moment how we use the word friend. We say, "I saw a friend in the supermarket last night," or "Now, John, he's a real friend," or "Honey, let's have a few friends over for dinner this weekend."
If someone were to press us for our own definition of what it means to be a friend we might make a distinction between work friends, church friends, close friends, distant friends, friends we see every day, every year, or at every tenth high school reunion. But we call them all "friends."
When we focus serious attention on what it really means to be a friend, certainly powerful qualities begin to surface, such as loyalty, trust, and openness. For extraordinary friendships, we soon realize that narcissism or any form of inappropriate self-admiration simply has no place in relationship. If anything, a preoccupation with self holds
Page 13
within it the potential of dealing a death blow to the friendship.
The Chinese have a word for it. To the uninitiated, the ancient Chinese language is filled with an overwhelming and baffling array of written characters. Even linguistic experts cannot agree on how many ideographs exist.
On a recent trip to Hong Kong, I decided to do something about my gross lack of knowledge about a language now spoken by almost one-fourth of our world's people. I spent an evening with a close friend who is also a scholar of the Chinese language. In two hours, he took me on a breathtaking, whirlwind oral tour of China and its more than five thousand years of history. During the course of our visit, we discussed the Chinese word for "friend."
The current, everyday word for "friend" in China today is peng yu, but its history goes back many centuries. My tutor drew a primitive Chinese character that represented the magnificent tail of a bird called "Phoenix." This bird was so marvelous in every detail that the written character came to mean something much more than "Phoenix." It slowly developed into a more generic meaning of "completeness... the sum total of physical beauty."
My friend proceeded to tell me that throughout the ensuing years, the literal meaning of the word was completely lost while the written character took on today's meaning "friend, friendship, or close association."
"Why was that?" I asked.
Outer, visible beauty arrests our attention to be sure, but the true, inner beauties in people — the elegance, truth, and consistency that live within the soul of a friend — are irresistible. In friendships, hearts relate to each other. Like the flock of birds that followed the ancient Phoenix into the
Page 14
heavens, people will do just about anything to follow a man or a woman who has developed a friendly heart.
In this book my aim has been to help readers realize how precious friendship is. It cannot be purchased, borrowed, or manufactured. It must be cultivated as a tender plant.
I cannot claim that I am a special friend. I do know I cherish the countless friends that are mine without merit. I am simply passing on the the principles governing human friendship I have learned over more years than I care to discuss! I hope you can and will use these principles in your life to recognize the value of friendship, to become a friend to others, and to accept the friendship offered to you.
This book could not have come into print without the dedicated research, loving assistance, and skill of my dear friend Robert C. Larson. He has worked with me as a colleague for many years, by far more importantly, he has been — and is — my friend. To him I owe the deepest gratitude.
This, then, is the subject of these pages: friendship. I offer ten powerful — and often overlooked — principles to help you develop the skills, sensitivities, and qualities that are essential in learning the fine art of friendship.
Ted W. Engstrom
