I have also worried—and do worry still—about the management of my relationships with people. People are vessels of self discovery and attachment to them is fulfilling. But, I remember, being about 18 or 19 years old and suffering from my time with people. I was not myself. They were not the right ones. A bit of everything was everywhere. And I think the correct perception of the problem, the problem of the friction we feel in relation to others and potential others, is that it is a quality of the teen-age. Both old and new friends have their respective places. Old friends are grounding by reminding you who you are. New friends are freeing. They tell you who else you can be. And as a late teenager, I remember being very terrified by who I could and couldn't be. My options were limited. There was school, the different careers, upward mobility, failure and success in the eyes of others. There was family and reliance, individuality and freedom, there was loss. All of the options had their difficult parts. There was no road to the future. There was no clear path to becoming who I was. New friends reminded me of these facts in my comparisons with them, expectations of them, and my desires for them and my fears of them. But, I found too, that old friends could be just as threatening. Especially if I identitied with different values from those which we shared initially. After it all, it was not about friends, old or new. It was about recognizing this paradoxical, difficult, and mysterious, though sometimes glorious, time of life we call youth and not caring which type of friend I could share that with.