Why do we make certain people our fast friends and remain indifferent to or suspicious of others? We may suppose we are free and independent decision-makers on matters of human attachment and affection. We may believe that we rationally assess the worthiness of others for our regard or disregard, but do we?
Clearly, we are born into particular families, social circumstances, and cultures that encourage our seeing some people as likely friends and others as unsuitable for friendship. We may be subtly trained, even at first acquaintance and without further exploration, to expect either friendship or animosity from someone.
A key factor in differentiating likely friends from foes, some say, is our presumption about their trustworthiness; and the less we suppose that we share with others in background, experience, and outlook, the less we are prone to trust them. And so, many a potential friendship is never pursued or even entertained as possible, where commonalities are not readily apparent.
Maria Popova writes a weekly online newsletter called “BrainPickings” which recently reviewed a children’s book on friendship. The intriguing book, “Friend or Foe?” by John Sobol, is a fable about a white cat and a little gray mouse which explores how expectations about the trustworthiness of a potential friend might be challenged.
In Sobol’s book, the little mouse lives in a house next to a great palace where the white cat lives. Each evening the mouse climbs to the roof of the little house and the cat perches on the windowsill of a high palace widow, and from that distance they watch each other. Day after day the two look at each other, and the little mouse begins to wonder about the time they share in mutual observation. Are they enemies, or might they be friends?
The mouse decides the question must be answered, and so he finds a hole in the palace wall, enters, and climbs the stairs to the room where the cat sits on the windowsill, looking out. Entering the room, the mouse calls out to the cat, “Hello, are you friend or foe?” The cat is so startled that he tumbles out of the window and onto the yard surrounding the little house. As the book concludes, we see that each evening the cat climbs to the roof of the little house, and the mouse sits at the window ledge in the palace. From their reversed positions, they still watch each other.
This wonderful book resists offering an easy moral. It leaves the question provocatively unanswered. If only the gap between cat and mouse could be bridged, if only hopes of trustworthiness could be proven, if only wary mutual observation could be replaced by an open interchange, might cat and mouse become friends?
The little fable of cat and mouse seems like a particularly timely one. With division and discord so readily apparent across our world and in our midst, are we likely to keep a wary distance from others? What would happen if we risked bridging the gap, if we explored the trustworthiness of others, if we entered into open interchange?
The life of faith challenges us to lessen discord and overcome divides. It’s not easy, but the attempt just might offer us a new friend or two.