University of Wisconsin Eau Claire - Periscope Yearbook (Eau Claire, WI)

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QLEn DAHL

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FRIENDSHIP Miss Miller, Dean of Women “Enu Claire Normal, dear old Normal, You're the best of all; We'll be true to your traditions. Whatever may befall. Have you, while singing those lines, ever analyzed what the traditions of Eau Claire Normal are? That would seem to be necessary if the lines are to be of permanent value. Among those traditions and ideals, I am certain that friendship holds an important place, for Eau Claire Normal is a friendly institution. But this ideal is not an easy one to live up to; friendship is no mere haphazard thing. It will need practice, study, and effort to convert these chance relations that we make during our brief stay in this institution, into more than mere preferences. We shall want friendship to mean a lasting relation, tested and established by years and circumstances. Those real friendships will be the choicest memory of your Normal days. Youth sets up standards of its own. The schoolmate who by chance prefers us to some others, becomes a friend; or possibly the schoolmate who gives us a sympathetic ear, or the one who defends us before others, or the schoolmate whom we defend in like manner. Are friendships based on such personal, almost selfish standards, apt to continue through adversity? Is there not a more fundamental basis for our ideal of friendship? As we grow older, the general rather than the personal is more evident in these ideals. FricndshiD becomes more than a personal attachment to some individual; it is a lofty ideal, attained only by a lofty nature, even though we bv follv or misfortune should fail to attain that ideal. Emerson gives such a lofty ideal of friendship when he says, A friend is one who makes us our best. That is far removed from petty quarrels, petty fault-finding, differences of opinion, and misunderstandings. It means more than that we insist on constant approval, devotion, and demonstration of affection. Emerson makes no attempt to state how a friend makes us our best. for that depends on varying circumstances and on individual interpretation. It does imply, however, that those friends will build up in their minds an ideal of what we must be in order to be our best, and that we must meet with those ideals in order to gain their friendship. Too often we want our friends to be not their best but what we prefer them to be. Such friendships will not live through the adversities of life. Soon you will be leaving the wall® of thi buildin , scattering about over wide areas, gradually interested in widely different affairs. Try to build up friendships now that will last through these vears to come. If low ideals are chosen now. personal rather than high general ideals, you may later have reason to find suddenlv that you have lost a friend. Being human, we shall often fail, but our ideals need not do likewise. The love, the wish to understand, the belief in human goodness, and the knowledge gained bv the experience of many sorrows and joys that bind our lives together will help us to gain that ideal. Let us not read expectations and virtues into each other that are not there; let us not endow each other with gifts that are not ours; let us simply try to be such friends as Emerson’s ideal points out.