Friendship

I have heard it said and I like it a lot.  “A friend is someone who, when you make a mistake, does not think you have done a permanent job.”  To me making mistakes is unfortunate but a part of human nature no one enjoys, but everyone does.  Though everyone does it, not everyone admits it.
Again, I heard that “friendship has been achieved when silence is comfortable between two people.”  I do like that, as it is my experience.  I know what it is like to feel I need to fill the air with opinions and then to have reached a stage where nothing needs to be said as I am understood and understand.
I read this by a C Raymond Beran on friendship.  I have modified it.
What is a friend? I will tell you.
It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with them. They ask of you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. They do not force you to be better, or worse but they are committed to your best, and will work to make it happen.   When you are with them you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can be genuinely you. They understand those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you.
With them you breathe freely. Your vanities, envies, hates, meanness and absurdities are open to them, but they love you anyway - knowing that is not the total of you, but for now may make up a part of who you are. They understand. Your sometimes abuse, neglect and tolerance of them is a sometimes wave that appears and disappears. Best of all, you can keep still with them. It makes no matter. They like you. They are a fire that purges to the bone. You can weep with them, laugh with them pray with them. Through it all—and underneath—they see, know and love you.  A friend with whom you dare to be yourself.
That to me is the way it is.  It may seem ideal, but I would rather reach for a noble ideal than just accept a muddy reality.