“…To be a friend is to step into the stream of another’s life. It is, while not neglecting my own life, to take pleasure in another’s pleasure, and to share their pain as partly my own. The borders of my life, while not entirely erased, become less clear than they might be. Rather than the rhythm of pleasure followed by emptiness, or that of investment and then profit, friendships follow a rhythm that is at once subtler and more persistent. This rhythm is subtler because it often (although not always) lacks the mark of a consumed pleasure or a successful investment. But even so, it remains there, part of the ground of our lives that lies both within us and without…”
I highly recommend keeping up with the Stone if you’re even moderately interested in philosophy. Done right, philosophy isn’t just about word games, pointless intellectual exercises, or getting a high score on the LSATs, but about articulating the little things you usually don’t have the patience (or ability?) to.
