Friendship is the highest peak of love. So you should live totally and live lovingly, but you should not dominate and possess. Do not allow anyone to possess or dominate you.Very rarely do people rise to this level of human love in friendship. Most of us get struck in animal love. Animal love is possessiveness. Animal love reduces the other to a thing, to a community.
But human love raises the other and helps the other to come to his or her flowering. Friendship does not use the other as a means to get something for one's self. It respects the other as an end unto himself. That is pure friendship.
Everyone needs a friend – someone who loves you so much that he will never let you go astray from the paths of holiness without scolding you and discouraging you. A friend helps you in two ways – to lay bare any self – deception or lying to yourself and to lift you out of depression and give you a heart. That is what the word encourage means – to give your heart. But you have to remember that in friendship, the only heart you have to give is your own. Some people come into our lives and quickly disappear.
