And yet, since dignity - understood as recognition - is something that must be conferred, two other assumptions about the human condition must be made: first, homo sapiens are inclined in some respect to regard one another as equals; and second, they cannot live optimally without having some form of relationship with each other. Indeed, both these ideals - that we are an egalitarian and social species - have become so commonplace in many parts of the world as to sound like hackneyed New Age notions.

Winnicott, my psychoanalytic hero, had something to say about this kind of situation. He was writing about parents’ concerns about children’s lies, but his insights go well beyond lying.

If development proceeds well the individual becomes able to

deceive, to lie, to compromise, to accept conflict as a fact and to

abandon the extreme ideas of perfection and an opposite to

perfection that make existence intolerable. Capacity for compromise

is not a characteristic of the insane. The mature human being is

neither so nice nor so nasty as the immature. The water in the glass

is muddy, but is not mud.

Tarrant paints a vivid picture of how challenging this can be. In one of my favorite

passages, he puts it like this:

If you are used to living in a small room and suddenly discover a wide meadow, you might feel unsafe. Everyone thinks that they want happiness, but they might not. They might rather keep their stories about who they are and about what is impossible. Happiness is not an add-on to what you already are; it requires you to become a different person from the one who set off seeking it.

If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have

understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve.

Few things are more important in life than avoiding the wrong people. It’s tempting to think that we are strong enough to avoid adopting the worst of others, but that’s not how it typically works.

We unconsciously become what we’re near. If you work for a jerk, sooner or later you’ll become one yourself. If your colleagues are selfish, sooner or later you’ll become selfish. If you hang around someone who’s unkind, you’ll slowly become unkind. Little by little, you adopt the thoughts and feelings, the attitudes and standards of the people around you.