And I? I sympathized, consoled, and encouraged him. At the end, I hugged him warmly, assuring him that whatever else, I would be there for him when he needed me.

Now, as I look back on the visit, a visit like so many others over the years, I wonder why I gave him so little of what I might have given him. When he left me, I know he was content. He thought he'd gotten something of value from me. But he got nothing. I poured warm oil on his wounds. But they were old wounds, wounds from out of the past, wounds that were crusted over with scar tissue. The new wounds he had experienced and the future wounds he was sure to suffer I did nothing about. We met, he was comforted, and I sent him on his way. I look back on that visit and I ask myself, Why, oh why didn't I help this man? Why didn't I give him what he needed to know that would have averted future agonies?

Had I told him what he needed to know, he would have been hurt. My words would have inflicted suffering. And, if he had taken them to heart, his suffering would have been compounded; he would have had to change his ways and in the process of going against some very well-established patterns, he would have suffered even more. This was the best thing I could have offered him, the proper and best medicine available. It could have worked miracles had I offered it to him and had he accepted it. He could have gotten well—not merely comforted, he could have become free and felt real joy.

But, I saw then as I see now, he didn't want that kind of medicine. Freedom and joy were not what he was after—it didn't occur to him that they were even available to him. What he wanted is pretty much what all of us want—to hang on to our old ways and not to suffer, or at least not to suffer as much as he was used to doing. Odd as it sounds, he was in love—in love with that dream of who he thought he was. He and that dream could not be parted. Therefore he was resigned to suffering and I was left with nothing to say of any consequence.

What I want to explore a little is why he didn't want to get free and step into another possibility. Why did he want to stay where he was, where he'd always been, and continue to suffer? You might guess that perhaps he doesn't know any better, that we could end it there and no one would be the wiser. But I know this man, I know he's felt the beckoning of a better life. We've all felt it, haven't we, and we've all recoiled from it. To step into another possibility is to step out of the familiar, comfortable dream we have of ourselves. Leaving it behind and moving into the unknown, with all its new feelings and new callings, makes us timorous, like a kid shivering at the windy edge of a pond, afraid of jumping in, afraid the water will be even colder than the air. And of course it is, for a moment or two.

Something beyond the reach of our will and our rationality holds us back. What could break this bondage? What force could make itself felt that would enable us to throw ourselves into the water, leaving our shadow on the shore? Some new knowledge? That seems too flat, too easy. Perhaps a new view of things. Or perhaps this: a new picture of what's needed, of what could be, a vision of the glory that we're missing. A vision like this can move us, can call to us—a picture that has the power of an outreached hand that we can grasp and that can lovingly and trustfully pull us into our element.

That's the problem: We're out of our element. As long as we stay alone in our private dreams we're not in the human element. The human element is togetherness, the common pool into which we all must jump. Only then, when we make that leap, do we become ourselves in the company of humanity.

This isn't a philosophical notion I'm talking about. It's not abstract, and it certainly isn't something that has to await another world, another place, or another lifetime. The possibility of entering the company of humanity is everywhere around us. It's a constant, open invitation.

When I think of my former student who was suffering so, I see a pattern of habitual compulsions that keep us caught in our painful and ultimately lethal isolation. The ordinary demands of life call him insistently. He stands alone at the edge of the pond, refusing to jump in. He holds himself back. He clings to a limited, particular picture of himself, clings to it like a life preserver, not recognizing it as the millstone it really is. Though life courses on all around him, he is untouched, unaffected, and, of necessity, uninterested. He leaves the same person he was when he came in, none the better, none the wiser, his imaginary, isolated self-picture hanging from his neck like the storied albatross.

Wherever he seems to be, he never is. He's just not there.

What he missed is the glory of the game. He can't imagine what it's like to drop his isolation and enter the world of humanity, the world in which we can become free to move in greater contexts, to be barefacedly there for each other. To have nothing else on our minds, no nagging worries, no other concerns, no life beyond this life, this being here, this being together. No past clinging to us, no shadow of the future. All of us here, now, in the magical, wondrous present.

To make that leap is to trade the tortures of our everyday hell for the kingdom of heaven. Knowing that, why would any reasonable person stand alone and lonely at the shore?