November 16
As long as my fortune stood, I did not know my friends; only when it fell did I see who stayed with me. Misfortune is bitter — yet it opens the eyes.
Tristia (Letters from Exile) (freely rendered)
Listening mode
As long as my fortune stood, I did not know my friends; only when it fell did I see who stayed with me. Misfortune is bitter — yet it opens the eyes.
Some certainties come to you only at the price of something breaking. Whether someone stands by you shows only when it costs them something. As long as nothing is at stake, affection and mere pleasantness look confusingly alike.
Still, you wouldn't want to impose this test on anyone, yourself included. There is a kind of ignorance that is easy to live in: you assume your friends like you, and you don't have to check.
If the test comes anyway, its results are less clear-cut than you would expect. Perhaps someone you had hardly counted on gets in touch regularly. Another stays silent, and you don't know whether out of indifference or because he couldn't find a first sentence. Silence is hard to read.
Afterwards you may know your friends better, or perhaps only differently. The question of who stays doesn't entirely go away when things are going well for you again. It just arises from the other direction, when someone is hard to reach right now and you wonder whether to call.
