The Benefits of Friendship

A friend of mine from Gilda’s Club recently sent me the following quotation about “caring” from Henri Nouwen’s book, Out of Solitude, “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” 

Some additional excerpts from Out of Solitude can be found on a cornerstonemag.com Features webpage entitled “Care”. In introducing the excerpts, the editor states, “The world looked on Henri Nouwen as one who had achieved, a great man, author of over twenty books, a talented professor who had served at Yale and Harvard. But for Henri it wasn’t enough. The last ten years of his life were spent at Daybreak, Jean Vanier’s l’Arche community in Toronto, Canada, where the concepts of his books finally met hard reality. At Daybreak he took care of a profoundly retarded young man named Adam. When someone suggested that he could delegate that responsibility, Nouwen retorted, ‘It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship.’ Henri made no more sense to the secular mind than his Master, and this is true greatness.”

Everyone who has cared for a loved one—whether it be one of their own children, or a sibling, or an aging parent, or a spouse, or a friend, or even someone they don’t really know—for a period of time becomes a little bit like Henri. They not only give the person they are caring for the “benefits of friendship” but they also give themselves the “benefits” that come from helping others.

As I daily scan scores of messages exchanged in various online sarcoma support groups and pause to read some of them in detail, I see the courage and strength of numerous Henris in the worldwide sarcoma community. Given the turmoil that our world is in and the harm that we see people regularly inflict on one another, it can give us a sense of peace and comfort to see the good that is done by so many in such a selfless way. We are all better people because of their example.

We grieve and mourn with those who have lost a loved one. We are inspired by the courage of those who do not let this disease diminish their lives. We can let their desire to fulfill their dreams fuel our own. We share in the joy of those who have survived.

In peace and hope,

Bruce

Bruce Shriver

Editor-in-Chief, ESUN

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