So first there is the struggle to ignite what we are born with, which often requires withdrawing from the pulse of the crowd and all its demands. But we are more than a collection of skillful hermits. Our bond to others is as necessary to our well-being as our solitude is for inner knowing. As the psychologist John Bowlby says:

Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves . . . From these intimate attachments a person draws [their] strength and enjoyment of life and, through what [we] contribute, [we] give strength and enjoyment to others.

It seems in living our life we are continually seeking the essence of relationship: of self to world, of self to other, of self to self, of self to the indescribable sum of these including the unnamable gradations of relationship in between which others have called God, Atman, Cosmos, Tao.

It’s not enough to stay off unwanted influence. For while we journey alone, we are not the only ones on the journey. And while each journey is unique, we all journey over common ground. We all come from and feed off the same center. So it must follow: if we are to verify our own experience, we must honor each other’s.

In the midst of his waterfall of genius, Mozart composed a very unique piece of music called The Table Duet. He wrote one set of notes on a single page, which could be read and played from either direction, from top to bottom or bottom to top. Read from the top down, one tune was revealed, and if read from the opposite direction, the bottom up, another tune was revealed. With the single sheet of music placed flat between two facing pianos, one player would read the page as right-side up, while the other would read a different tune from what they perceived as right-side up. Yet the same notes read from opposite vantage points would create a duet when played together.