FINDING APPROVAL

There is no such thing as an autocratic individual, totally independent of the surrounding world and its recognition … Striving to find approval in the eyes of others, being noticed and not being dismissed as nothing by others demonstrates that I cannot relate to myself without relating to the world … I constantly vacillate, even to the very end of life, between the judgment others make about me and my own judgment of myself [and so] I am constantly trying to ascertain others’ judgment about me [so that I can make] my own judgment of myself …

OSWALD BAYER, LIVING BY FAITH

THE LEAST NATURAL OF LOVES

Friendship is -- in a sense not at all derogatory to it -- the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It his least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale ... The species, biologically considered, has no need of it. The pack or her -- the community -- may even dislike and distrust it ... Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the bruites. You could feel these tugging at your guts and fluttering in your diaphragm. But in Friendship -- in that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen -- you got away from all that. This alone, of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels.

C.S. LEWIS, THE FOUR LOVES

FRIENDSHIP

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.

C.S. LEWIS, THE FOUR LOVES