Under the heading ” I Nearly Died.  So What? ” Megan  Daum, a columnist at The Los Angeles Times talked about her experience of a rare disease that nearly killed her. ( New York Times, November 16, 2014)

Ms. Daum described her recovery and the reactions to it from her friends and acquaintances.  All wanted to know whether her experience had changed her and whether she had experienced a spiritual or moral transformation (subtext: “Go back to being healthy, but we hope you are sufficiently transformed never to be whiny or ungrateful again.”)

Then she discusses the death of her mother, with whom she was not very close.  She found herself describing the “really special time together”; how they had looked at family photos together; and how her mother (who had died just after Christmas) had “kept Christmas for us” and ” passed away peacefully this afternoon”.  Ms Baum said that her account of her mother’s death kept things “at a gauzy remove” that implied love and mutual caring, where the truth was that her mother was at best confused and at worst may have forgotten who she was.

The point of the ( rather brave) article was that Ms. Daum found herself giving friends the messages they wanted to hear, wrapped up in a sort of dreamy love-speak that was not wholly felt by the daughter.  With true friends you should be able to be truthful.  In previous generations these types of experiences were shared with close family, never with a wide rang of Facebook-type friends and certainly never with the world at large.  The modern desire for telling everyone about your life has had the effect of  making one a fraud, telling people what society expects to hear, rather than telling the truth.

The test of true, Epicurean friendship is whether you can be truly candid.