"If you want to get to the top, there's always the risk that it will isolate you from other people"

Ambition compresses life. To reach “the top,” attention narrows, routines harden, and hours are converted into skill. That conversion has a price: there’s less time and emotional energy left for reciprocity, play, and the slow maintenance of relationships. The summit is narrow by definition; few people share its weather, and the air can feel thin. Even when others admire the climb, they may not fully understand the interior sacrifices, missed gatherings, stunted hobbies, the constant negotiation between practice and presence.

Isolation here isn’t only physical. It can be temporal (your schedule diverges from everyone else’s), psychological (fewer true peers who grasp the stakes), and symbolic (people start relating to the status, not the person). Some of it is self-chosen: guardrails that protect focus. Some of it is imposed: expectations, scrutiny, envy, or the subtle distance created when excellence turns you into an object of comparison.

Solitude can be a crucible for mastery. Long stretches of undisturbed work produce clarity and originality. But the same solitude can erode empathy, shrink perspective, and tether identity to outcomes. When worth is measured only by winning, losses feel existential and relationships risk becoming transactional, useful until they aren’t.

The challenge is to engineer an ascent that doesn’t amputate connection. That means scheduling intimacy as rigorously as training; diversifying identity so that performance is a chapter, not the whole book; cultivating a small circle that offers truth rather than applause; mentoring to keep humility and widen perspective; practicing presence so that the hours you do give are undivided. It also means accepting that some misunderstandings and distances are inevitable, and refusing to romanticize loneliness as proof of seriousness.

Greatness without humanity is brittle. The real victory is not merely reaching the top, but learning to breathe there with others: strong enough to stand alone when needed, rooted enough to belong when it matters.