Friendships & the Partial Self

Seneca says a self-content person is content with a partial self. Even if they lose a hand or an eye, they are satisfied with what remains. They are no less pleased with what is left than when their body was whole.

"But while they do not hanker after what they have lost," Seneca says, "they do prefer not to lose them.” This is what’s meant when he says the wise man is self-content. “He is able to do without friends, not that he desires to do without them."

It is "more of a pleasure to make a friend than to have one," in the same way that "an artist derives more pleasure from painting.

The experience gets better as you grow up. You realise you made friends through pure happenstance, convenience, or friends of friends. The friendships you make consciously as a grown-up mean more.

True friendship is rooted in virtue and mutual respect. Friends should support each other’s moral and ethical growth.

Seneca warns against transactional friendships. They will leave as soon as 'payment' stops.

"A person who starts being friends with you because it pays them to do so will similarly cease to be friends because it pays them to do so."

“The necessity of circumstances proves friends and detects enemies.”

Seneca says that if this betrayal or desertion does happen, you have lost nothing. That person was never a friend, and you still have the qualities that allow you to make and keep new friends.