I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.

“I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.” — thus wrote Saint Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo, whose heart knew both the fire of human love and the peace of divine understanding. This simple confession carries within it a profound and timeless longing — not for glory, not for wealth, but for mutual remembrance, the desire that love and friendship be eternal, equal, and true. For what greater sorrow is there than to remember one who has forgotten you, or to love one whose heart has moved on while yours still lingers in devotion?

Saint Augustine’s words spring from the soil of grief. In his youth, before he became the philosopher-saint the world would know, he lost a dear friend — a companion of his early days, one whose soul was bound to his by affection and shared thought. When that friend died, Augustine wrote of his sorrow in The Confessions: how he could not walk through the familiar streets without pain, how every place they had shared became a wound. “My heart was darkened with sorrow,” he said, “and wherever I looked I saw only death.” It was in this agony of memory that the words were born — the yearning that his friend might miss him still, as he missed him, beyond the veil of the grave.

The meaning of his quote lies not in bitterness, but in the sacred desire for reciprocity of love. True friendship, Augustine teaches, is not a possession but a reflection — each heart shining back the light of the other. It is not enough for one to feel, to ache, to remember; friendship finds its completion only when the affection is returned, when each soul keeps vigil for the other. “I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him” — these words express the deepest hope of human connection: that love does not die when distance or death comes, but endures in both hearts alike.

Across history, this longing for mutual remembrance has been the pulse of human friendship. Consider the bond between Cicero and Atticus, those ancient Romans whose letters still breathe with affection after two thousand years. When war divided them, and politics forced them apart, Cicero wrote with pain yet faith: “I cannot forget you, though I know not whether you still think of me.” Yet Atticus did — his replies were steady, his care unwavering. Their friendship outlasted the tumults of empire, because each remembered the other as long and as deeply as he was remembered. Thus, their names live forever entwined, a testament to what Augustine yearned for: a love equal in remembrance.

The image Augustine paints is tender, yet powerful — for to miss someone is not a weakness, but an act of love’s endurance. It means that the soul refuses to surrender its bond even when absence stretches across days or death. To miss is to hold space for another in one’s heart — a sacred altar where memory burns like a candle. And Augustine’s wish, that this feeling be shared, speaks to the universal longing for equality in love — that what we give should not vanish into silence, but return to us in kindred echo.

But this quote also teaches us the impermanence of earthly love, and how it points toward something higher. Augustine, after all, came to believe that every earthly attachment — even friendship — must lead the soul toward the divine. He saw that our yearning for a friend’s eternal remembrance mirrors the divine yearning for communion with God Himself. For in God, he believed, there is no forgetting, no fading of affection, no parting of souls. Thus, even human friendship, when pure and steadfast, is but a reflection of divine love, the eternal mutual remembrance between Creator and creation.

The lesson, then, is twofold: cherish deeply those who walk beside you in life, and do not fear to love them enough to miss them. But also learn to love in a way that does not cling, but blesses. Reach out to your friends — speak words of affection before the silence of time steals the chance. When distance grows, write; when parting comes, remember. And when grief strikes, do not curse the pain of missing them — for that pain is proof of love, and love is the closest thing to immortality that the heart can know.

So, when you recall the face of an old friend, or whisper a name long absent, remember Saint Augustine’s gentle wisdom. To miss someone is to love them beyond presence, beyond time. And to be missed in return — ah, that is heaven’s own joy, where friendship never dies, and both hearts remember forever, as long as love itself endures.