An Introvert's Field Guide To Friendship

'Whatever our degree of friends may be, we come more under their influence than we are aware,' the trailblazing astronomer Maria Mitchell observed as she contemplated how we co-create each other and recreate ourselves in friendship. Her friend Ralph Waldo Emerson -- whom she taught to look through a telescope -- believed that all true friendship rests on two pillars. 

In his own life, he put the theory into practice in his friendship with his young protege Henry David Thoreau -- a solitary and achingly introverted person himself, who thought deeply and passionately about the rewards and challenges of friendship.

Maria Popova shares more in this post.

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