These days friendship is an inflated, wasted, exploited and used up term.

And yet, taken in its authentic and original dimension, for me it is to be exalted.

I have never called someone a friend that I didn’t know or just got to know.

Nor will I ever do it.

I have never confused an acquaintance, nice person, attractive person, esteemed person with a friend.

Nor will I ever do it.

I write and speak about friendship because in its mature and responsible form it is a source of enjoyment and meaning.

It is not privation, escape, habit, normality, ease or interest.

It is a skill.

It is a space for eternal life.

Conceived as such, friendship is a continuous, fascinating interior journey, even if, at times it can be painful. To reach the form of friendship I intend, you need to clean your heart of perverse personality mechanisms that mystify, take responsibility away and render impossible a relationship with truth and therefore ourselves, others, the world and with God.

To be true friends means continuously reawakening to new life.