Mutuality is how we balance selflessness and selfishness. It’s where giving tree and new age generosity find compromise. But an important caveat to mutuality is that we cannot offer it to everyone. As much as we’d like to care for citizens of all seven continents and those of their corresponding archipelagos and islets, we cannot. The more contacts we have, one study found, the less time we spend with each one. That study also found that the larger our network, the weaker our relationships tend to be. If we try to invest in everyone, we may end up investing in no one. To embrace mutuality,
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