thieves recognize thieves

stealing love, attention, time, and eventually, greatness

Timothée Chalamet’s delivering his viral acceptance speech at the SAG Awards

If I ever find myself on a stage, accepting an award, my speech would have to begin with this admission of guilt: I’m a thief. I’ve stolen time, attention, love, laughter, care, support, and so much more precious life from everyone who has ever invested in me. Every time someone stayed up late to hear my half-baked ideas, and every shoulder offered in moments of doubt, I stole it all. I even sent drafts of this piece to multiple people to leech off of their ideas. (Read the whole thing and tell me if it helped lol)

But while I coin this sentiment as thievery, others casually say “it takes a village.” Which is true, it does. It's a pattern that repeats in every success story: the supporting cast that transforms individual ambition into collective achievement. Or sometimes vice versa, collective ambition into individual achievement.

This truth demands a delicate balance: the humility to acknowledge those who shaped our journey, and the courage to recognize when we might be shaping someone else's. Because we exist in an intricate web of mutual influence, a living ecosystem of growth and support. Every conversation that pushes an idea further, every moment of honest feedback, every shared celebration or commiseration – it’s all relevant context.

This context is so vital to our existence. It’s the reason for our existence. In the community and culture that we curate and immerse within, we find the formula behind our personal growth. And it’s unique to each person. Henrik Karlsson describes this cultural context as a milieu:

A milieu, says GPT-3, is the culture contained in your unique set of connections. (Merriam Webster’s dictionary says “the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops”.) Unlike the word culture, as anthropologists invoke it when they talk about “French culture” or “Balinese culture”, a milieu is not a monolithic thing. Your milieu is not the same as your sister’s. It is an ever-shifting, individual configuration of information flows. The Twitter feed you have curated is a milieu. Your friend group (which is not the same as the friend groups of the other people in that group!) is a milieu.

It is by changing your milieu that you change yourself.

This is not to say that all milieu is intentional and hypercuratable, but rather that it’s something we can cultivate. There’s a certain level of spidey-sense ability, that I believe carries far in curating this contextual surrounding, beyond the lame 2nd and 3rd degree connection methodology from Linkedin. From the algorithm you curate on social media or the coworkers on your floor of the office or the people sitting next to you at pottery class, your milieu is a direct flow of influence and inspiration on your intellectual bloodstream.

Shouldn’t you think twice about who has that kind of clearance?

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the tools we shape, thereafter shape us

In this case, the tools are the people within our milieu. As intentional or not, the reinforcement mechanisms are embedded in the humanity we exhibit constantly. Even in the smallest of quips or the disgust we show in our eyes, our capability for emotive feedback is what drives development, iteration, and growth.

Example: When I make dinner for Anya and she takes a brief pause after her first bite to tell me how it is, I already know that I’ve fucked up. That split-second hesitation indicates to me that something’s wrong, and I’ve failed to satisfy my only customer. It’s a minute detail, and maybe one that only I would notice, but after years of trial and error, I’ve learned that this kind of feedback is what refines my methodology and understanding.

A critical step in training large language models is “reinforcement learning from human feedback,” which is where you make the computer say something and then you either pat it on the head and go “good computer!!” or you hit it with a stick and go “bad computer!!” This is how you make an AI helpful and prevent it from going full Nazi. Humans also undergo reinforcement learning from human feedback—we get yelled at, praised, flunked, kissed, laughed at (in a good way), laughed at (in a bad way), etc. This is how you make a human helpful and prevent it from going full Nazi, although clearly the procedure isn’t foolproof.

from Adam Mastroianni’s Two stupid facts that rule the world

We crave this kind of tactile, tangible feedback from our surroundings. This kind of contextual evidence enforces a sense of map-boundaries and keeps us from going rogue. Every ‘like’ on a groupchat message and every message asking if you want to get food, it all matters.

random texts I received in the past few months

I respect and support all the buzz around self-affirmations and mood board screen savers; they can be great personal motivators. But nothing compares to the tactility of a human interaction; especially not the AI interactions we’re enticed with nowadays. The digital validation we get from algorithmic platforms are momentarily satisfying, but not necessarily helpful in personal and humanistic growth.

When someone takes the time to genuinely engage with you — to challenge your ideas or validate your experiences — they're contributing something uniquely valuable to your development that no automated system can replicate. This human-to-human exchange forms the backbone of meaningful communities, the kinds that shape not just our thinking but our fundamental sense of self.

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fish are friends, not food

There’s only so much of this humanist process that can be mechanized, however. Making friends and building relationships is very much an intuitive process that often starts and ends with the question of “do they like me?” And in answering that question with nuance and tangibility, we might approach a more metricized answer as opposed to the binary feelings of the gut or heart.

To build your community is an important task, if not the most important, and to leave such a responsibility to the whim of internal organs is somewhat like trying to eat soup with a fork.

Friendship, at its core, should not feel like work. It should not require a mental spreadsheet to track emotional debits and credits. The only metric that should truly matter in friendship is disarmingly simple: do you feel good after spending time with this person?

from Maalvika’s more on "low-stakes friendships"

I’ve often referred to this newsletter as a means for curating a lovely group of people in my ‘digital living room’. This goes the same for any communal endeavor, where the people you allow into your space and onto your wavelength have a very real and important role in the output of your practice, be it inspiration or influence.

There’s a nuanced difference between influence and inspiration, though. Inspiration can be drawn from many sources and often passes as a fleeting thought, be it in a sober, thoughtful setting or a lucid inebriated state. The sources for inspiration can be inanimate and also not. Inspiration often snowballs into larger ideas and developments, but still only exists as a fraction of our lives. Influence, I believe, is most effectively a humanist pursuit. And as most pursuits do, influence starts and ends with intention. Influence is a long lasting development of something that burns deep within the soul — again, a human, living concept.

I’ve drawn inspiration from many sources, sometimes a random girl crying in her car and other times a bag of oranges. But I am influenced by the humans I most revere and admire and watch. And often, these humans are influenced by me, because we coexist in each others’ contexts.

This context is a highly saturated palette of influence and inspiration. The people within this context, I hope, will bring out a full spectrum of emotion in me, urging a wildly chaotic stream of consciousness that somehow still aligns to the north arrow in my overall growth. Whatever their inspiration and influence might be, is uniquely personal to me and my milieu. These people are the catalyst behind all and any of my success. Anson Yu has an interesting take on how to find such people:

Friends and I call it the 'sparkle'. They reliably shine in every context. It's a joie de vivre mixed in with a dedication to craft, lightly encased in wit. Chances are, they'll become the best in their field (and have fun doing it). You just want to be around them. They have a good vibe. Note that the 'sparkle' is limited to people that are actively prosocial. Being nefarious, even in trace amounts, takes away from the bit. I care a lot about is finding these people - particularly, picking them out early. Selfishly, they're fun to be around. Tactically, I think more of them should know each other. I attribute most of any personal success to good luck and great friends. I'd like to enable that for someone else.

Personal success becomes a facade for communal growth — and attributing the majority of our personal wins to good luck and great friends takes a certain level of humility and courage, like I mentioned at the start. The humility allows you to see beyond the personal bubble, identify said “sparkly” people, and indulge in that context. The courage allows you to steal them for yourself, and shine in that context with them.

The parameters of influence and inspiration vary wildly between each person, and the way we attract humans into our circles varies too. But the key is to understand the value of curating such a context, and immersing yourself in it. Because the magnitude of growth is not dimished by the number of people involved, but rather amplified by the number of intersections we’ve crossed and the gems we’ve collected along the way.

And to revere the existence of such friendships is also to indulge in the intentionality of of being a friend. As you embody that context as a friend, you must respect yourself enough to understand the value you hold in their lives. You are a crucial part of your friends’ success and growth, just as they are for you — remember that, always.

"We live in a world where so many people sell the idea of perseverance as an individualistic pursuit, when it’s not. I think too many people forget the pats on the back and the hugs and the encouragement and load liftings. They forget all of it. [They forget that], there was somebody there, accepting you despite your failures."

from Trevor Noah’s episode on Diary of a CEO

Consider this context as you immerse yourself in social settings or groupchats that change the direction of your north arrow. Recognizing yourself as an atom among a molecular structure of milieu is not meant to make you feel smaller or imposter-esque. It’s about being part of something bigger, something larger than yourself.

Acknowledge that your personal growth is intricately tied and dependent on the people you surround yourself with — and their growth, in turn, is influenced by you. Mutual thievery. In cultivating your milieu with intention, you gather the invisible forces that either limit or liberate everything you become.

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crumbs

• “When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and must take a step into the darkness of the unknown, believe that one of two things will happen. Either there will be something solid for you to stand on - or you will be taught how to fly.” - Patrick Overton

• “Happiness is only real when shared” - Chris McCandless

• “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” - C. S. Lewis

• “To be a gardener is to give a fuck. To be a gardener is to be invested in a place—to know it, to protect it, to be present to it. How can we protect and heal ourselves and our planet if we’re not willing to step into, and value, the role of the gardener?” - Georgina Reid

• a TikTok that captures our national anomie and restlessness

• this note:

• this screenshot:

  

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A vast majority of this essay was inspired by the Trevor Noah podcast episode on Diary of a CEO - specifically, this part. I highly recommend watching that episode and also reading all of the articles and essays linked throughout the text above. I spent weeks trying to find the right words for this because I care deeply about this, althought it proved difficult to articulate and iterate on similar sentiments from other writers.

I could’ve leaned into the brevity, and just posted a note that says “the friends you choose are really important for your personal growth” but that doesn’t hit the same way. I hope this one hit different.

This newsletter is a literal embodiment of this curation process, especially in the comments section, where I connect with some really amazing people. If you feel moved or inspired by what I’ve written, be one of those amazing people and leave a comment or click on the little heart. Tell me about your milieu, and I’ll share mine with you. Maybe they’ll merge one day, who knows.

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if you liked this post, I would definitely read this one too: