The real wisdom here isn't permission to be greedy—it's permission to grieve. Most of us torture ourselves believing we *should* somehow compress a full life into every moment: the devoted parent who also wants to be the ambitious professional, the artist who needs financial security, the friend who also needs solitude. Friedan's point cuts deeper than mere time management; she's saying that seasons exist, that letting something matter less right now doesn't mean abandoning it forever. A woman who steps back from her career to raise young children hasn't failed at ambition; she's simply sequenced it, and that's not settling—that's being honest about the texture of a human life rather than pretending we can live all our versions simultaneously.