This is a very good piece. I would agree that if you index for aspirational friends you would likely be happier in the long run. Having a myopic view of almost transactional friendship can easily leave you totally alone if they have the same kind of loose ties/ambition centric value system.
On a high-level note how do you view ambition though and cultivating it? You are constantly in flux/changing in terms of your values, who you are, etc. should you ever optimize for ambition/focus on your current map of desires or should you mainly be kind of in a state of exploring/dive into desires sparingly when serendipity hits and it would be interesting?
Also the ambition centric model seems to optimize for mastery in a discrete area over progressive self development. The latter is clearly more robust. Do you view mastery in a discrete area still as kind of an important self actualizing tool on a personal level? Is mastery an overrated metric for happiness? Or is the issue more that the ambitious friends model is a crutch to lower the activation energy to work on a short term passion but that activation energy is not that high and is more of a function of self confidence/openness with your friends? How do you view riffing on ideas as well? I guess if you riff with a plurality of aspirational friends you are more likely to hit a means that makes you happy then if you pigeonhole yourself into one myopic lens. Should you not only try not to have interesting friends but not try to be an interesting person?
I enjoyed this article, thank you for writing it. It got me thinking about the reciprocal nature of a good friendship. Maybe we should spend as much time working on ourselves to be that good friend for the others we aspire to become friends with?
I really enjoyed this article, and it got me thinking about the reciprocal nature of a good friendship. Maybe we should spend as much time shaping ourselves to be that good friend for others?
This is a very good piece. I would agree that if you index for aspirational friends you would likely be happier in the long run. Having a myopic view of almost transactional friendship can easily leave you totally alone if they have the same kind of loose ties/ambition centric value system.
On a high-level note how do you view ambition though and cultivating it? You are constantly in flux/changing in terms of your values, who you are, etc. should you ever optimize for ambition/focus on your current map of desires or should you mainly be kind of in a state of exploring/dive into desires sparingly when serendipity hits and it would be interesting?
Also the ambition centric model seems to optimize for mastery in a discrete area over progressive self development. The latter is clearly more robust. Do you view mastery in a discrete area still as kind of an important self actualizing tool on a personal level? Is mastery an overrated metric for happiness? Or is the issue more that the ambitious friends model is a crutch to lower the activation energy to work on a short term passion but that activation energy is not that high and is more of a function of self confidence/openness with your friends? How do you view riffing on ideas as well? I guess if you riff with a plurality of aspirational friends you are more likely to hit a means that makes you happy then if you pigeonhole yourself into one myopic lens. Should you not only try not to have interesting friends but not try to be an interesting person?
I enjoyed this article, thank you for writing it. It got me thinking about the reciprocal nature of a good friendship. Maybe we should spend as much time working on ourselves to be that good friend for the others we aspire to become friends with?
I really enjoyed this article, and it got me thinking about the reciprocal nature of a good friendship. Maybe we should spend as much time shaping ourselves to be that good friend for others?