I took a stroll to the post office, and thought about why I have been think about my friends from the 90s.
One salient point was that many of them developed traits of increased insecurity and gatekeeping over a period of about 8 years, between the late 90s and early 00s. Perhaps that is what the transition from adolescence to young adulthood centres on, for many people.
I have had different traumas of course, so my ambitions appear to be rather different. I lack the concern that there are tables I am not invited to - in fact often I am bemused that I even get invitations to sit with people whom I don't seem to be helping at all. I am mainly concerned with the quality of my own table, and the detraction of quality brought about by those I bring to it. Then again perhaps it is just a matter of taste, and we differ in that respect.
I think, one of my greatest challenges has been, context switching - i. e., memory management. When engaged in communication and service to society, I prefer to be wholly present in order to work within the complete frame-of-mind of the people I am helping. But outside of that context, I prefer to be wholley absent in order to work around them.
This is not something that many people aspire to. They often consider it mean. I think, it is a joy to participate in the lived experiences of other people, and then also to be able to scorn them immediately as required by circumstances. The development of such breadth of capability is what I think of as mental conditioning.