“I don’t mix personal and professional.”
That’s how a colleague from some years back memorably introduced herself to me, only to become shortly after, and while we were still working together, a close friend.
Just as our professional relationships can benefit from integrating some of the moral and social norms that are implicit in our lives outside the workplace, might our personal relationships also benefit from thoughtfully applying some of the thinking that makes us so effective at work?
Alain de Botton explores one aspect of this in a short animated video, with his unique blend of gentle humor, subtle melancholy and deep optimism:
Our attempts at friendship tend to go adrift, because we collectively resist the task of developing a clear picture of what friendship is really for. The problem is that we are unfairly uncomfortable with the idea of friendship having any declared purpose, because we associate purpose with the least attractive and most cynical motives.
He goes on to illustrate his argument for why getting clearer about what friendships are for can lay the foundation for genuine bonds, using four examples: networking, reassurance, fun, and clarifying our minds.
Friendship is, of course, so much more than its purpose. As C.S. Lewis wrote beautifully:
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself [. …] It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
How might clarifying its purpose enrich a relationship you currently have with someone whom you consider a friend?