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Equal parts

Reader question:

What does this sentence – He was equal parts friends, mentor and confidant – mean? What is "equal parts"?

My comments:

The sentence means that he was a friend of yours. He was also a mentor from whom you get advice and guidance. At the same time, he was a confidant, someone you trust and confide in (tell him things you don't tell others).

"Equal parts" points to the fact that he was those things at once.

You can better understand "equal parts" this way. Say, you want to divide a piece of cake into three parts for three children. To avoid squabbles over who gets a bigger (or smaller) slice of the cake (I'm more like talking about my generation than the current lot, but then again we didn't have anything but pancakes to fight for during my childhood in the 1970s. In the 70s, brothers - and sisters, too - often fought for food. Seldom do you see siblings fight for food nowadays. One, there aren't any siblings to begin with as families often have only one child to feed and fend for. Two, there's usually more than enough food to go around anyway. A toddler today is more likely to fight a parents-led obesity war, as a matter of fact), you divide the cake into three equal parts. That is to say you (are skilled enough to) cut it into three pieces which are the same in bigness.

Metaphorically speaking, if you are equal parts happy and sad, you have what is called a mixed feeling. If you, say, see your child off for college, you're very happy (and equal parts relieved I'm sure) that the child is grown up and going away (at last). But at the same time you are very sad at the parting, because you're worried whether the child would be able to fend for himself/herself alone, whether he's able to maintain personal hygiene all the time or something like that – as a parent, you'll always find something, mostly trivial and uninspiring to the child, to worry about.