Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

I actually think it’s critical to care *deeply* what other people think, but choose those people carefully — only people you’d consider your *teachers*! If someone has the power to easily punish or reward you, that person is your teacher whether you’d endorse it or not

In other words, I don’t want to be *entirely* my own master as long as I have many friends wiser than myself

'Master' implies that you defer to these wiser folk when you disagree. This is a mistake. That they are *usually* more right than you doesn't mean they are right in the (few?!) cases where they fail to persuade you. If anything, the opposite is to be expected.

Likewise for being 'taught' or 'trained' if those terms have connotations of deferring unpersuaded.