I.65 — Company

Somewhere on this road there are other wayfarers, walking at their own pace, some further along and some just starting, none of them above another for it. A hand that has practiced longer is only a hand that has practiced longer. It has not earned a place higher than any other hand, because the road was never that kind of road, and this book was never that kind of book.

Company is worth having anyway, not despite the lack of rank but because of it. Walk near someone else on the same road and two things become available that walking alone does not offer: encouragement, plain and unadorned, and honesty from a person who has felt the same grips from the inside and can name yours without flattery or cruelty. Neither of those requires anyone to be in charge. Both work better without it.

Watch for the moment company turns into authority, a wayfarer's word taken as more than one honest report, a longer-practiced hand treated as a judge. That moment is a grip too, and it can be seen and loosened like any other. The road stays level. Everyone on it has only walked longer or shorter, never higher or lower.

What was found in stillness, then turned outward toward others, now has to be carried the rest of the way: into whole days, into a whole life, all the way to its end and back to its beginning.