An Honest Friend

June 17, 2026

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Robert Louis Stevenson

About the Author

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, and essayist best remembered for Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Born into a family of lighthouse engineers, his own path took a very different shape: a severe, lifelong respiratory illness — almost certainly some form of chronic tuberculosis — left him spending much of his life chasing a climate his lungs could survive in. He crossed oceans and continents not as a tourist but as a man in search of breath itself. Despite frequent hemorrhages and long stretches of profound weakness, his spirit stayed remarkably buoyant, sustained in no small part by a circle of devoted friends and, eventually, his wife Fanny.

Historical Context

By the winter of 1879, Stevenson had just completed an exhausting, almost reckless journey across the American continent — steerage passage on an emigrant ship, then a grueling train trip to California, all to reach the woman he loved. He arrived broke, emaciated, and by some accounts close to death. It was during that hard winter in Monterey and San Francisco, nursed back from the brink by a small handful of local friends who took him in and refused to let him die alone in a rented room, that he came to understand something he never forgot: no landscape, however vast or beautiful, is navigable without genuine companionship. The wilderness he wrote of was not only geographic. It was the human condition itself, and he had just crossed it on the strength of a few people who chose to stay.

Scripture Cross-Links

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 — “Two are better than one… for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.”
Proverbs 17:17 — “A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
Mosiah 18:9 — “Willing to mourn with those that mourn… and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.”
Doctrine and Covenants 42:45 — “Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die.”
John 15:13 — “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Thematic Reflection

Stevenson’s choice of the word “wilderness” was deliberate. Life often does feel like an unmarked landscape — sudden storms, steep unexpected climbs, long stretches where the trail simply disappears. In our own time we have more connections than any generation in history and may be lonelier for it, mistaking followers and notifications for the kind of friend Stevenson meant. An honest friend is not the one who only tells us what we want to hear. An honest friend is the one who sees us exactly as we are — our doubts, our failures, our blind spots — and stays anyway, gently telling us the truth and reminding us, when we forget, of who we really are and whose we really are.

Richard’s Personal Reflection

In thirty years of internal medicine, I sat with a great many patients walking into the wilderness of a frightening diagnosis or a long, grinding illness. I came to notice a pattern that no textbook ever taught me: the medicine mattered, but it was never the whole story. A patient’s actual resilience — the will to keep fighting, the capacity to still find a little joy on a hard day — seemed to multiply when there was one honest, devoted person sitting in the chair beside the bed. I cannot give you a lab value for that, but I watched it often enough to trust it completely. Healing was never really a solitary work. The steady presence of someone who loved the patient changed the whole atmosphere of the room, and I believe it changed the body too, not only the spirit.

Grandfather’s Counsel

My dear ones, you will cross a great deal of wilderness in this life — some of it beautiful, some of it frightening, almost all of it unfamiliar. Choose your traveling companions with care and with prayer. Don’t measure a friend by how entertaining they are or how impressive they look beside you. Measure them by whether they tell you the truth, and whether they stay when the path gets hard. And then be that kind of friend yourself — to your spouse, your siblings, and the people the Lord puts in your path. I credit much of whatever good I have done in this life to the honest friends, and to your grandmother, who walked beside me. Choose yours the same way.