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Passage 90. Old Friends, Good Friends

More than 30 years ago, when I took my first job in New York City, I found

myself working with a number of young women. Some I got to know just in passing,

but others gradually became my friends. Today, six of these women remain an

important part of my life. They are more than simply friends, more even than close

are old friends, as indispensable as sunshine and more dear to me than

ever. These people share a long-standing history with me. In fact, old friends are a lot

like promises. They put reliability into the uncertainty of life and establish a

reassuring link between the past, present, and future.

The attachment between friends who have known each other for many years is

bound to be complex. On occasion we are exceedingly close, and at other times one or

both of us invariably step back. Ebb and flow. Thick and thin. How smoothly and

gently we negotiate these hills and valleys has everything to do with how well the

friendship ages.

Sometimes events intervene in a way that requires us to rework the term of a

relationship. A friend starts a second career.L

et’s say, and suddenly has less free time.

Another remarries, adding someone new to the equation. Talk honestly and listen to

each other to find out if

the other’s needs are being met.

Renegotiating pays full

tribute to life’s inevitable changes

and says that we deem our friendships worthy of

preserving.

Old friends are familiar with the layers of our lives. They have been there in the

gloom and the glory.

Even so, there’s always room to know more about another

person. Of course, self-disclosure can make even old friends more vulnerable, so go

slowly: Confiding can open new doors, but only if we knock first.

Time is the prime commodity between old friends

—

by this I mean the time

spent doing things together.

Whether it’s face to face over a cup of coffee,

side by

side while jogging, ear to ear over the phone, or via email and letters,

don’t let too

much time go by without sharing your thoughts with each other.

Passage 89 Stress Prevention

Stress is a normal part of life and usually comes from everyday occurrences.

Here are some ways you can deal with everyday sources of stress.

Eliminate as many sources of stress as you can. For example, if crowds bother

you, go to supermarket when you know the lines won’t be too long.

Try renting

videotapes rather than going to crowded movie theaters.

If you are always running late, sit down with a pencil and paper and see how you

are actually allotting your time. You may be able to solve your problem (and distress

your life a bit) just by being realistic.

If you can’t find the time for all the activities that are important to you,

maybe

you are trying to do too much. Again, make a list of what you do during the day and

how much each activity takes. Then cut back. Avoid predictably stressful situations.

If a certain sport or game makes you tense (whether it’s tennis or bridge),

decline the invitation to play. After all, the point of these activities is to have a good

time.

If you know you won’t, there’s no reason to play.

If you can’t remove the stress,

remove yourself. Slip away once in a while for

some private time. These quiet moments may give you a fresh perspective on your

problems. Competing with others, whether in accomplishments, appearance, or

possessions, is an avoidable source of stress. You might know people who do all they

can to provoke envy in others. While it may seem easy to say you should be satisfied

with what you have, it’s the truth.

Stress from

this kind of jealousy is self’

inflicted. Labor-saving devices, such as

cell phones or internet, often encourage us to cram too many activities into each day.

Before you buy new equipment, be sure that it will really improve your life. Be aware

that taking care of equipment and getting it repaired can be stressful. Try doing only

one thing at a time.

For example, when you’re riding your exercise bike,

you don’t

have to listen to the radio or watch television.

Remember, sometimes it’s okay to do

nothing.

If you feel stress (or anything else) is getting the better of you, seek

professional help

—

a doctor or psychologist. Early signs of excess stress are loss of a

sense of well-being and reluctance to get up in the morning to face another day.

Passage 88. Ambition

It may seem an exaggeration to say that ambition is the drive of society, holding

many of its different elements together, but it is not an exaggeration by much.

Remove ambition and the essential elements of society seem to fly apart.

Ambition is intimately connected with family, for men and women not only work

partly for their families; husbands and wives are often ambitious for each other, but

harbor some of their most ardent ambitions for their children. Yet to have a family

nowadays

—

with birth control readily available, and inflation a good economic

argument against having children

—

is nearly an expression of ambition in itself.

Finally, though ambition was once the domain chiefly of monarchs and aristocrats, it

has, in more recent times, increasingly become the domain of the middle classes.

Ambition and futurity

—

a sense of building

for tomorrow

—

are inextricable.

Working, saving, planning

—

these, the daily aspects of ambition

—

have always been

the distinguishing marks of a rising middle class. The attack against ambition is not

incidentally an attack on the middle class and what it stands for. Like it or not, the

middle class has done much of society’s work in America;

and it, the middle class,

has from the beginning run on ambition.

It is not difficult to imagine a world short of ambition. It would probably be a

kinder world: without demands, without abrasions, without disappointments. People

would have time for reflection. Such work as they did would not be for themselves

but for the collectivity. Competition would never enter in. Conflict would be

eliminated, tension become a thing of the past. The stress of creation would be at an

end. Art would no longer be troubling, but purely entertaining in its functions. The

family would become superfluous as a social unit, with all its former power for

bringing about neurosis drained away. Life span would be expanded, for fewer people

would die of heart attack or stroke caused by overwork. Anxiety would be extinct.

Time would stretch on and on, with ambition long departed from the human heart. Ah,

how unbearably boring life would be!