Someone thanked me the other day — really thanked me — for showing up in their life. And I said the thing that came to me, which was: at the end of the day, we’re all just walking each other home.
(I found out later Ram Dass said it first. The nerve.)
But here’s what I didn’t say, because I was only just realizing it myself: they’ve been walking me home too.
It keeps happening. I sit with someone — a client, a friend, sometimes a near-stranger — and somewhere in the conversation, I’m the one who learns something. That things tend to work out. That money matters less than I was raised to believe. That kindness isn’t a luxury you earn once you’re secure; it’s available to anyone, right now.
I’d heard all of that a thousand times from teachers and books. It never got past my defenses. It gets past them when it comes from someone who isn’t telling me, just living it, usually with every reason not to.
I keep thinking I’m the one who shows up for people. It’s the thing I’m supposedly good at. But the ones I show up for keep quietly showing up for me.
Maybe that’s the only way it ever really works. Not one person saving another. Just two people, walking each other home.