"... unfamiliar places or homes at appointed times, even when you’re not in the mood; commuting to the gym or the neighborhood park instead of working out at home. Not to mention, maintaining existing friendships also takes work and emotional investment — without any guarantee of a return. If your goal is optimization today, tomorrow or this week, it almost always makes sense to push friendship-building and maintenance down the list of priorities. But I’d suggest that the more important cost-benefit analysis to do is the longer-term one: If your goal is to be grounded and fulfilled over the course of a lifetime, then there is nothing more important than nurturing our essential bonds.... Like so much else about emerging from this pandemic, the key is pushing through the resistance and making a first step.... Is there pleasure — and a certain nobility — in solitude? Of course, especially for introverts like myself. But [Buddha, asked whether] 'good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship' make up half of the spiritual life [said] 'This is the entire spiritual life... good friendship, good companionship and good comradeship.'"
From "One Part of Your Life You Shouldn’t Optimize" (NYT).
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27 comments:
Thurber "Let Your Mind Alone!" is the cure for self-help books (essays fisking self help book excerpts).
Cost-Benefit Analysis. What a emotionless sterile way of looking at relationships. People need relationships because we were built to be in relation with one another.
I was getting a tetanus shot booster and the lady was typing in the vial expiration date for the records. I asked if that was an expiration date of a best-by date. She looked puzzled. Not a new friend.
I can't put my finger on it but there is something creepy about this message. Maybe the coldness of the friendship calculation?? Personally, I've always found that the best friendships come from serendipity but I've never done a friendship calculation so what do I know? I am sure somewhere someone is developing an algorithm for that.
Seems like a lot of filler articles in the Times these days. Many of them dealing with 'my angst' on various topics- post covid. Because without question: Covid seems to have had more long-term effects on New Yorkers than any people anywhere else.
What has happened up there?
It comes down to where a community gets its source of information. And it touches a post Ann had yesterday on optimism vs pessimism. Where I live, we lived freely during covid. We had sunshine. We were careful, but we lived. People looked at each other in the eyes and smiled. We gathered when we could. Optimistic. When I went north to visit, it was a much darker world. Tied down. Masked up. Cloudy and cold. People looked down and did not look each other in the eye. Pessimistic.
There is a difference in not only where you get your information, but how it is presented to you.
I was shaking my head and forming a response in the first couple of sentences, but, he got to question I was going to point out.
What's the goal?
That takes some examination and guidance to get to "the goal".
It took me a long time. But that time honored question was answered. Why are we HERE?
answer, Be of service to others.
"If your goal is to be grounded and fulfilled over the course of a lifetime, then there is nothing more important than nurturing our essential bonds.... From "One Part of Your Life You Shouldn’t Optimize""
Logic!
Since moving to New England three years ago, I have made dozens of new friends via a shared interest in the great outdoors and physical fitness. It's an anti-fragile way of being. The navel gazers call it wild swimming, forest bathing, bonding and linking social capital, blah blah blah.
I feel sorry for the people who are the target audience for pieces like this. Ostensibly, they're intelligent, sophisticated, individuals -- because they read the NYT! But the content of the piece suggests that they're lonely and afraid and, well into their adult years, they still have no clear idea how to live happy and fulfilling lives.
Is the person who wrote this on the autism spectrum? It reads like he could use an IEP about how to make friends.
Yeah, if I'm looking to make new friendships I'm definitely going to go to the NYT for advice. [Sarcasm if that wasn't clear.]
If your goal is to be grounded and fulfilled over the course of a lifetime, then there is nothing more important than nurturing our essential bonds.
Hmm. There used to be a biological collective that provided such fulfillment. The word would be FAMILIar to all. Unfortunately, it's horribly outdated.
Here's an idea. Organize a little birthday party for a co-worker.
One measure of true friendship is to consider how many of your friends (count relatives too) would be grief-stricken over your death. Communication researchers used to agree on approximately twelve as the number. We're talking people who were totally bereft at the loss.
They called it your "sympathy group."
It takes time and energy to develop close, lasting relationships.
I suspect the number may have changed over the last decade.
Consider also how many people in your life whose death would cause you to be grief-stricken.
m
But the content of the piece suggests that they're lonely and afraid and, well into their adult years, they still have no clear idea how to live happy and fulfilling lives
Sort of defines NYT readers, doesn't it?
It's a good gig being able to point out the obvious at the NYT and get paid for it.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but.........
If you lend a friend $100, and never see them again.
It's money well spent.
If you want a friend, be a friend.
All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Tcrosse (and puppy dogs)
"It comes down to where a community gets its source of information. And it touches a post Ann had yesterday on optimism vs pessimism. Where I live, we lived freely during covid. We had sunshine. We were careful, but we lived. People looked at each other in the eyes and smiled. We gathered when we could. Optimistic. When I went north to visit, it was a much darker world. Tied down. Masked up. Cloudy and cold. People looked down and did not look each other in the eye. Pessimistic."
I lived in NYC throughout the pandemic, and virtually all New Yorkers wore masks and practiced social distancing. Yet, I never felt we weren't living freely. We also had sunshine, we interacted and socialized, and we were optimistic. This notion that wearing masks and being careful is/was somehow a restriction of our freedom or that we couldn't carry on pretty much normally and happily is a fiction.
I've experienced two other significant events in NYC prior to the COVID shutdown that imposed limits on the city's residents: 9/11 and a city-wide (region-wide) blackout a year or so later. In my experience of these events, New Yorkers adopted a "we're all in this together" attitude, and we just got on it with it. No cry-baby blabbering about "infringements on our freedoms."
I lived in NYC throughout the pandemic, and virtually all New Yorkers wore masks and practiced social distancing. Yet, I never felt we weren't living freely. We also had sunshine, we interacted and socialized, and we were optimistic. This notion that wearing masks and being careful is/was somehow a restriction of our freedom or that we couldn't carry on pretty much normally and happily is a fiction.
You must have a different definition of "freedom" from mine. Restaurants, bars, museums, entertainment venues were all shut down for extended periods of time. Many never reopened. For many months about all one could do was take a walk or go to the grocery store or pharmacy. All the result of tyranny ("emergency powers") and propaganda.
Then of course there was the big uptick in crime, uncontrolled rioting in the summer of 2020 forcing whatever businesses were open to board up their windows. Yeah it was great.
The guest author who wrote this graduated college 2008. His target audience not AA commenters.
Concise version: You get better long-term outcomes if you use a low discount rate than a high one in your personal cost-benefit calculations--or in any other intertemporal decisions, like saving.
People who don't understand optimization shouldn't bother to write op-eds cautioning against it.
I lived in NYC throughout the pandemic, and virtually all New Yorkers wore masks and practiced social distancing. Yet, I never felt we weren't living freely. We also had sunshine, we interacted and socialized, and we were optimistic. This notion that wearing masks and being careful is/was somehow a restriction of our freedom or that we couldn't carry on pretty much normally and happily is a fiction.
I lived in Boise, ID throughout the pandemic. After the first six months or so, and certainly over the last year, few Idahosers wore masks or practiced social distancing. This notion that masks and mandates (pardon me while I check NYT stats, states ranked by death rate, oh there it is, NY 347/100,000; ID, 275) are a sham of a theater is a fact.
NYC is still muzzling children? I'm sure they are completely happy and normal about that.
#Religion
>>t took me a long time. But that time honored question was answered. Why are we HERE?answer, Be of service to others.
Also "It's not about you". Once I figured that one out I've had a much better life. More friends and better friends.
"No cry-baby blabbering about "infringements on our freedoms.""
Says everyone pre-conditioned to the boot.
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