Nearly every year, I attend a Christmas service, even though I’m Jewish. Every year, the officiant delivering the homily points out that Christmas occurs in winter, bringing us hope in dark hours. As he says, Perhaps it is the winter of your life. One of those winter years, this made me so sad I almost needed to run out. For comfort, I took the pendant of my necklace in my hand. It was a gift from a friend. And I found myself taking a kind of inventory: My dress had been suggested by another friend, while shopping, and my jacket was a hand-me-down. Of everything I wore that night, the only item I had chosen without influence was my underwear. Although I’m hardly a fashionista, the exercise with my clothing made me feel solid, for reasons Alexander Nehamas helps explain in On Friendship, a response to a famous essay by Montaigne. Nehamas, who teaches philosophy and comparative literature at Princeton, argues that our friendships make us distinctive. He also says that modern friendship is mostly about taste.

Source: Character Counts | The Weekly Standard