I don’t veer off in my own preferred direction but rather stay observantly with the rambling and listen closely for any quiet indications of what the person is really trying to say. I have come to understand that rambling rhetoric is valid. It is the best way my client has to express her experiences. Here and there I interject an insightful remark based on what I am hearing, which comes through like a peal of thunder. Occasionally a client, breathless from the meaningless narration, will say, “I wish you would say something enlightening.

This sort of gap between what a person says and what he makes you feel is not uncommon – think of the friend who rings you when you’re down, talks to you in an encouraging, supportive way, but leaves you feeling worse. The space between Matt’s words and the feelings he provoked in me was enormous. He was describing a life that was frightening, but I didn’t feel frightened for him. I felt uncharacteristically disengaged.

For a long time, including the day I met Emily, I believed that decent people did not wish to cause suffering. This I now know not to be true.

I am reminded of what Einstein said on the death of his friend: He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.

There’s something about doing it with someone else, she said, something in just talking about it, something about how it leaves you feeling afterward. Decisions seem lighter; everything is lighter.