It is not simply to be unafraid of otherness - it is to seek out and attach value to otherness and in this way to extend ourselves and assert our humanity.

Precisely the place to which our eulogist finally puzzles her way: her own mixed feelings. First she sees that she has them. Then she acknowledges them to herself. Then she considers them as a way into the experience. Then she realizes they are the experience. She begins to write.

Penetrating the familiar is by no means a given. On the contrary, it is hard, hard work.

Staying with the feeling is key,” I declare. “Most people go straight to what is wrong with them rather than staying with the feeling.” David’s eyes fill with tears. I can see that he is following my logic. “I’d like to believe it,” he says quietly.

I couldn’t latch on to a thought and then be carried by it as it moved into new territory. To do that, I think you need a narrative self inside you connecting you with experience, telling you how you fit into the subjective encounter with what you’re seeing and attaching whatever significance it might hold for you.

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.