The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore
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Highlights
- I would come to learn, slowly, is that community is about a series of small choices and everyday actions: how to spend a Saturday, what to do when a neighbor falls ill, how to make time when there is none. Knowing others and being known; investing in somewhere instead of trying to be everywhere. Communities are built, like Legos, one brick at a time. There’s no hack.
- Indeed, anyone living in a big city knows this is true: you can have 100 friends and feel lonely. As Matthew Brashears, who conducts social network research at the University of South Carolina, says: “The problem isn’t ‘are you socially isolated,’ ie, you have no social contact. The question is, are you experiencing social poverty, inadequate social support?”
- The thing that makes us happiest in life is other people. And yet other people are often the first thing to fall off our list of priorities.
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Warren Buffett, a friend of Gates, says that his measure of success comes down to one question: “Do the people you care about love you back?” “I think that is about as good a metric as you will find,” wrote Gates. I’d concur. Keep connecting with people, and in time, you will have a community.