One of the most common metaphors used to describe life is that of a race, where the goal is to get as far as possible in the shortest possible time . Naturally, most people would want to (run, and) reach the end of their race in the best condition possible; that is why we, as human beings, have spent the better part of history wondering how to live the good life – and inventing the concept of self-improvement in the process.

Generally speaking, there are two methods by which we go about the process of self-improvement:

1. We try to equip ourselves as much as possible. This is what people do when they start new courses, learn new skills, buy new stuff, invest in new productivity tools, etc.

2. The second option would be to run as lightly as possible, that is, to include only that which is absolutely essential to what we believe is our mission in life.

Most people who spend significant amounts of time online would have come across the minimalist movement. The general idea behind this movement is simple: less is more. By cutting down on personal possessions and decluttering our lives, we can reduce the time (and space) spent maintaining stuff, and truly focus on the things that are important to us (that is, of course, assuming that the stuff we currently own is not very important to us).

This is an idea with plenty of merit. In fact, it has so much merit that many people have taken it a little step further: If we could only cut down all forms of distraction, not only the physical clutter, but also the emotional clutter that comes along with unproductive relationships, we could live vastly superior lives than we are currently experiencing.

Again, this is very true, and there is plenty of evidence to support. Many public figures would have had better careers, and done more for humanity, had it not been for the various scandals they put themselves into. Many people would enjoy healthier marriages if they would just eliminate the extramarital affairs; many others would do truly great work if they didn’t waste so much of their time quenching fires that arose from personal drama.

Now, even though there is no law anywhere stating that self-improvement cannot include a combination of both approaches, the reality is that we tend to skew our efforts in one direction or the other. The more common approach, though, is the first – we usually try to improve themselves by adding things to our lives, even though removing some things (and people) could prove as effective.

Why is this so?

The first reason is fairly simple: Separating ourselves from anything is hard. And, the difficulty of this process is proportionate to the amount of time we have spent with the thing in question. There seems to be some form of emotional bonding that occurs with the stuff that we own, and, of course with the people in our lives, that makes it hard to let them go, even when we believe that parting ways with them would make us better people.

The second reason is the crux of this essay, because it is more subtle, and generally applicable only to the human side of things: Separating yourself from a group of people because you do not think that they have a place in your life anymore somehow carries the connotation that you think you are better than them. Or that they are not good enough to accompany you on your life’s journey. Which is a particularly problematic thought to have. On what basis do you make such judgments?

Now, to be clear, there are times when such separations are actually easy to make – when the relationships in question are downright toxic. It is not difficult to make the decision to walk away from people who are verbally or physically abusive, for example.

However, except for a very few of us, the “toxic” relationships in our lives don’t come so neatly packaged. Most of the things that cause so much of the drama and trouble do not necessarily stem from a place of wickedness, but from personal weaknesses of the other parties. And therein lies the difficulty – cognizant of our own weaknesses, how can we summon the moral courage required to reject other people on the basis of their own weaknesses?

Most of the advice about eliminating “toxic” people from our lives asks us to carefully evaluate the relationships – and eliminate not only those which are outright harmful, but even those which are seemingly innocuous, but serve no purpose. Even though this seems like really great advice on an abstract level, when it comes down to implementation, it seems like a pretty utilitarian way of viewing relationships. If we were to evaluate everybody in our lives based on what they brought to the table, and eliminate those who, by our judgment, contribute little to nothing to our lives, how many friends would we truly have? How sure are we that we bring something to the table in every one of the relationships we belong to? What if everybody eliminated us from their lives because they didn’t think we made any substantial positive contributions to their lives? Most importantly, is being a better person really worth it if there was nobody to share the “betterness” with?

So… what started out as a simple question of self-improvement has become a moral question, and, depending on how deeply you think about it, an existential one.

What are we to do then?

Honestly, I don’t know. This is one of those things you think about, and both sides of the question seem to make perfect sense – just in different ways. One side makes sense intellectually – keep only the people who absolutely support you and contribute positively to your life. The other makes sense rather emotionally – separating ourselves from people we have grown to love is a process wrought with many questions about ourselves, and what we are willing to sacrifice to live what we think is the good life.

And that’s the entire point of this essay: to emphasize that there is a side to self-improvement that requires some measure of moral courage – a point not emphasized often enough. This is the period of the year when people usually decide to change the directions of their lives. But as we all know, such decisions hardly ever last. Most of us would assume that it is due to laziness on our parts, but it is not always the case. Sometimes we really want to change, and have the required discipline, but simply lack the moral courage to do so.