Relationships You Should Have But Don't

I made a list of all the social relationships that we're missing and that we don't even know that we're missing uh I made it into this nice little chart here I think that the importance of describing social relationships that we don't have is so that we can keep our eyes out for the things that we're missing so that we can look for it because you won't find what you can't describe and you will find things that you look for so these are things to look for these are things to be aware of you might find

that some of these social relationships are important in a way where the other social relationships that you maybe you have or that you're you you don't have but you think are really important to get just aren't as important so I sorted this into underrated in green and overrated in red and uh the underrated ones are things that you should be looking out for the overrated ones are probably things that need less emphasis uh as a whole I would say so let's start with you you're the central node in this large network of possible social relationships

that you could have and by just being that Central node uh you have a lot of you know agency in making these connections you have a lot of good that you can do for others for the world and doing things for others in the world can be good for yourself now why are you overrated well it's because socially we've been fed this message that you either need to take self-care days and you know really focus on yourself and really just help yourself and start with yourself first put your own gas mask on before helping others

some truth to that certainly but it's also a very atomizing perspective so is the sigma grind set that I need to make a bajillion dollarss by staying alone going monk mode going unic mode and and locking yourself away in a room uh and just grinding and working and staying in your little cave thinking that's going to change anything so yeah you're in uh this little bubble here and you are highly overrated because you as an as a as a little node as an individual node just aren't that important and you never will be that important

with other people and if you want to live an important life a meaningful life you need others in it I don't think that's uh that shouldn't be controversial it feels very uh very Against the Grain to say that so people get very triggered when I say that but yeah it's true you need you need people other than yourself in your life okay but we all kind of understand that there are some people who are just alone and it's just them uh those people are I I feel sad thinking about those people I don't want to

think about it too much because it makes me too sad but most of us understand we need friends and family friends and family those are kind of the the the the bread and butter of of social relationships that we know we need now not everybody I guess thinks we need friends we live in very sick times times that'll be a thesis to this video but yeah I mean you know you probably have a couple of friends and you probably have some family if you only have family though you might just feel like an earring you

know uh on your mom or something like you might still feel mentally 12 years old because these are the relationships you start with but as you grow you realize you need more than just your family to be a full person and then friends you know maybe you have a couple of friends on Discord uh but I'm not going to complain about Discord better than nothing and uh maybe you have like I don't know a few friends here in and there um but what happens when you have friends and family what happens when You' filled out

those roles well we assume that there's only one role left to fill out Lover this is the one that we all fantasize about this is the one we dream about this is the one we think we'll fix us so we get into a series of relationships and the relationships have all of the pressure of all these other social relationships concentrated over here my point is lover is a highly overrated concept don't get me wrong okay romantic love is a beautiful thing being physically intimate with someone it's nice it's a it's a it's a part of

life it's a good part of life it's also not the only thing that matters I don't know why I have to say this but it really I really can't get this through your skull enough if this is all you have you don't have much and if this is all you have if this falls apart you have nothing because what happens when we go to lover we spend less time with friends we spend less time with family we put all of our social relationships into this all of the other social relationships we should have the pressure

of a mentor uh an elder an enemy a peer an acquaintance a best friend goes into your lover and they cannot be all of those things they never will be so think about that if you don't have a lover and you think a lover is going to fix you no it's just it's not this doesn't work like that it doesn't look work like that for anybody a good lover exists in the context of a broader community and is someone that is integrated with your broader community so you guys can't just be sociopaths towards each other

so yeah I would say highly highly overrated so moving on to some things that are underrated how about best friend let's start with that remember being five and having best friends and then you get older and you're like well maybe I shouldn't be hierarchical with my friendships maybe you should maybe you should know some people that you can call up at 3:00 a.m. and cry towards maybe you can should know some people that if stuff went South for you that they would sacrifice their own personal well-being at least in the short term to help you

out do you have these kinds of people do you have these sorts of people in your life if you don't maybe you should be making some deeper connections with your pre-existing friends so that you can have that kind of relationship with them maybe you should be that person to other people maybe you should be someone's best friend it's worth considering okay but let's move on let's move on maybe that's not maybe that's not something you feel like you want okay peers are people that do what you do uh it can be if you're really good

into break dancing then you have break dancing peers if you're if me I have a internet person community uh and these those are my peers some of them are my friends some of them are friends and peers um but yeah these are these are these are good ways of seeing yourself and other people in having a hierarchy to compete with you know if you're doing really well on YouTube then you can feel good about it because you're doing you know you're you're doing better than the people around you and you have like a sort of

barometer for uh if you are doing well and if you don't have real people in your life then your peers are just like online people and then what you're competing with fake people that don't exist that you don't know and that will not celebrate your wins with you that will not mourn your losses with you what do you have if you don't have peers but this is still kind of rated because you know these are also your co-workers um and maybe you maybe your co-workers are all online or something and that's not ideal but still

we we typically have these as we get into work and you know you you have these built in when you go to something like school or university uh you have you find your peers there this is also a good way of making acquaintances and you should have acquaintances too yeah that's right you should have acquaintances you should have people that you you don't know very well but they are possible uh you know connections that you could deepen and and make into friends or make into peers right um mentors this is probably the most underrated mentorship

I have a mentor my me relationship with my mentor has been longlasting and constantly generative and positive and people hear that I have a mentor they give me weird looks they're like hm you must be this must be this must be some sort of perverted relationship an older guy you're hanging out with someone not your exact number of age and I find this very strange I find this very deeply sick actually because to sublimate yourself to subjugate yourself willingly to an older person to replicate some of their traits whether it is uh intelligence or success

career personality you know maybe it's their Social Circle that you're you're trying to replicate to gain access to their resources to their advice their wisdom this is so important and no one has it we used to have all of these by the way when we had communities we would have all of these things and then we forgot we we forgot we got amnesia and we decided oh all we need is this this and that and we don't even need really this and this mostly what we just need is that lover so uh yeah you this

has been way better for me than any uh than any lover like just having someone to help me with my life who is similar to me who I would like to be more like in some ways highly highly underrated I think uh when people look at me weird for having a mentor I look at them weird for not having a mentor I think it's kind of messed up that they don't because it's such a useful generative relationship now a lot of people are like well what does the mentor get out of it imagine you're 40

imagine you're 40 years old and you have these skills and uh you're successful in your field but maybe you don't know a lot of people who uh really appreciate that and a younger person comes up to you and is like I really respect what you're doing I'm a fan of you and I want to do whatever I can to help you and to learn from you you think you're not going to help that person of course you are everybody wants to replicate their pattern of behavior that's why we put so much emphasis on the lover

category so we can just blah make a kid but there's many ways of passing on your pattern of behavior and one of them is just like I don't know ever heard of a special little guy called Jesus Christ so mentorship is important and um it's good for the older person it's good for the younger person uh you you want to find someone who's got some age on you but that age has translated to actual wisdom not everybody older than you is wiser than you this is a sad reality some people just stagnate mentally uh from

the age of like 18 so find the right person that can be a life-changing experience was for me I'm in Toronto and have the community that I have because of my mentorship that was my first big relationship that changed my life and uh if if you're like oh that's weird I can't hang out with someone 10 years older than me that's weird good luck no seriously good luck I wish you well uh try doing this life [ __ ] alone because you'll find that it's kind of impossible okay uh Mentor is kind of like in

a broader kind of Elder category uh Elders are kind of rated because on one hand there are boomers and Boomers tend to be you know genuinely kind of confused and unhelpful about the state of the world and maybe give you negative wisdom or negative advice um but underrated because social relationships are uh typically just within your own age group right now and it's super helpful to have perspectives from people who have been through what you've been at the same stage of life that you've been in and give you some context with the life that you're

living uh a community leader is kind of also in the Elder category Community leaders could be like a priest or like the guy in my meditation Center just like someone who's got some clout in some field and is running community events and that's that person that is like the leader of that one Community typically a spiritual Community I can't even think of like other kinds of community leaders right now because I've been so atomized brained that there's probably other social relationships that I'm missing here and I'm just not aware of uh because I'm like figuring

this out for myself right now and I'm just realizing how many social relationships that I have not been like fil fulfilled in in my entire life until very recently so I'm just figuring I'm figuring this out now as well but yeah a community leader probably also kind of important to have um but not not so not not not the most important thing rival okay a rival I I drew this overlapping with enemies and peers a rival is someone that pushes you to be better and that you have some real fundamental disagreements with but you would

never want to you would never want them to fail because you want to just be a little bit better than them you want to keep competing against them and you want to keep uh you know smashing your own ideas against their ideas and and you know if it's like a peer rival relationship it can be like a loving positive relationship you guys aren't trying to [ __ ] each other over you're trying to like make each other a better opponent to compete against a good rival is someone who shares a lot of your traits and

just has like a uh a couple of different sliders uh Twisted in different direction so uh these are like alternate versions of yourself that maybe like execute things in the same way that you do but come to vastly different conclusions or come to the same conclusion as you but with vastly different executions that's a good way of looking at it um arrival pushes you to be better arrival makes you uh want to beat them but not destroy them and uh a good rivalry pushes both of you forward and makes both of you better people uh

makes both of you challenged in your fundamental assumptions about the world uh uh a rivalry rivalries are are are fun they're they're good to have and uh they're not an enemy an is someone you just want to crush under your heel speaking of which enemies um these are people you just want to destroy and I would also say enemy is underrated too because some people are like I have no enemies and maybe it's because you don't know anybody or stand for anything have you ever thought about that have you ever thought that having no enemies

is a luxury of being an atomized [ __ ] it's a cope it's a cope that makes you think oh well I must I have no enemies that must mean I'm a good person I'm a good stoic maybe you should have an enemy or two maybe you should have someone you want to crush like a bug and uh I don't know I was I probably do rival instead of enemy but it's not such a bad thing to have enemies it means that you're you have some sort of perspective or or thing that you that you

stand for me my enemies myself climate change introverts and people with antisocial personality disorder those are my enemies um so yeah the I'll just repeat this the point of this isn't to make you feel bad if you're lacking any of these things the point is that you can be looking out for roles to fulfill you uh as you go through life I didn't know uh I needed a mentor um until I started I guess maybe in University looking out for one and it took me a really long time to find one but when I found

one I was like aha yes this is what I needed but I only found it because I was looking out for it and I took the initiative to make it happen and a lot of these relationships aren't going to happen because we live in sick sick times and everyone's just thinking about this if you go out and you are very explicit about I need a mentor I've been thinking about you as a mentor you will be surprised how many people take that bait and go and be your Mentor because we all want more social relationships

in our lives and we just don't know it uh and you it might the onus might be on you to take the initiative and be like the person that deepens a relationship with your friend until they are one of your best friends until they were a ride or die friend right uh it might be on you to uh h build a community out such that your lover is not the most important relationship in your life and by the way it's it's okay if the lover is the most important relationship to your life but it shouldn't

be your only one it should not be your only one it's not going to be a good relationship if it's your only one too much pressure on that node so you see what I'm saying here right keep your eyes peeled for these relationships don't feel bad if you're missing a lover right now and if you do have a lover right now and it's all you have and you feel like stuff is missing this will be a better relationship if you have a mentor and a rival and peers and best friends this will just this will

be a better situation so I'm not saying go unic mode and uh go you know asexual celibacy mode maybe maybe that's for some people but if if you if you desire this that's fine but like integrated it into the rest of this there's so many more relationships you're missing and your life gets so much better when you have them in your life if you feel like what you're doing is meaningless and and and nobody cares about you I know if I died right now I'd have a good funeral there would be a lot of people

there and that's because of all of the so uh I don't know if most people can say the same I think it's sad and I don't even know if I have all of the social relationships here that I should I'm sure I'm missing some um because I grew up only thinking about this and this and this and this sometimes and it's just not it's not enough to make you a full person it's really it's really it's really not I can't be more sincere about this like get a mentor get a rival these these push you

to be better you will be better as a person you'll be happier I don't know why I made a chart I have autism