I.13 — Their Hands

Once you can see your own grips you will begin to see everyone's. This is the first danger of the practice.

The friend who cannot let a slight go. The parent clutching a picture of who you were. The stranger in the queue, whole body clenched around a delay. It will be tempting to see these clearly and to feel, quietly, above them.

Do not. Their hands are your hands. The same fist, the same cost, the same forgetting. A person gripping is a person in some pain, however they are behaving, and seeing that plainly is the beginning of a warmth that does not have to be manufactured.

There is a test here, and it is an uncomfortable one. Next time someone's clench is obvious to you, look for the same clench in yourself within the day. It will be there. It is nearly always the same one — you see it in them because you know it from inside.

What this practice grows, if it grows anything, is company. Not a room of loosened people looking down at the gripping ones, but a road of people with hands, all learning the same slow thing.