The purpose of friends is to help you better yourself. If we have friends that like us to go drinking and partying all night, those friends aren't helping us focus on our Stoic practice. Surround yourself with others who want to be like you or better put, surround yourself with people who want to being something like what you also want to be. We need Prokoptonic,. if that's a word, which probably isn't, but you know what I mean? The same is true of Stoicism. Just like if you're interested in architecture, it's helpful to hang out with other architects or people interested initects. That's my first takeaway from this letter.