Delphic Maxim 71: Associate with your peers
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.
71. Associate with your peers
As I sit on my lounge, a haze of smoke wafts over Sydney — exacerbating my hayfever and dulling my sense of smell. It’s a fitting way to begin a week after a weekend spent with my friends, holding a writers festival in this same lounge room. A writers festival where my peers — specifically my friends — all put in time and effort to write a talk and present it to the rest of us.
Such high concept events work because they are different, but also because we are speaking to a group of peers. There’s nothing wrong with associating with people who might come from a different background, age group, class or intellectual domain, but the depth and reward that comes from associating with your peers is of a different order. Having shared life experience allows you to riff on the themes that you have in common.
Peers is distinct from friends, of course, though often the two align. The thing about peers is that they are more able to give you an informed critique of your work. Peers are better able to appreciate the effort, or the allusions, or the excitement you may have about something you’re explaining. It’s both a deeply gratifying experience, and also one that strengthens our intellectual work.
I don’t think this maxim is inviting us to not associate with others. Variety is important — there’s a lot we can learn from people who are outside of our peer groups. But regularly associating with our peers is the best way to build our identities. Having a group of people to develop alongside is important, and that can be difficult when we don’t associate with peers, instead looking to groups we don’t belong to. We need a kind of social anchor in order to experiment and grow — there’s a kind of safety that comes with everyone being on the same page.
This maxim is also a call to make time to associate with your peers. We tend to get busy with work, or retreat into ourselves because we’re exhausted, but actually we forget that life is made better by the presence of others. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever take time out for ourselves, but it’s important to remember how much the ancients valued friendship, and our deepest friendships are often with our peers.
I’m going to abbreviate today’s time commitment, because I’m pretty exhausted from a big weekend of writing, thinking and laughing — a weekend spent associating with my peers. It’s rewarding, and fun, and I can highly recommend the concept of having a writers festival in your lounge room.
