SEVEN

The Company We Keep

Human beings are gregarious by nature. We like to spend time alone, but most of us prefer to spend more time with other people than by ourselves. It is our nature to share—a meal, a hug, a conversation, a time and place. I know that just having another person in the room or in the house keeps my consciousness more alert. I can sit quietly all evening with no need to talk or exchange anything out loud, as long as there is someone else there. Now that I am usually alone in the evenings, I find it difficult to maintain the attention necessary to do all I would like to do and often fall asleep over a book or manuscript.

When I visited China, I noticed that I was often unwilling to do certain things unless I had company. By which I mean that I was willing to enter the subway in Shanghai without having any idea how it worked, where it went, and how to pay (and, of course, I do not speak Chinese) simply because I was exploring with another woman. I don’t think I would have had the nerve to do this alone. We often draw courage from someone else and can be terrified on our own.

A few years ago I was staying in a wooden cabin in New Mexico, and in the middle of the night I was awoken by the worst thunderstorm I had ever experienced—two whole hours of forked lightning and thunder directly overhead, all reverberating around the wooden walls and visible through all fifteen windows. I was completely terrified. There was nowhere to hide. There was no phone, no lightning conductor, and my hosts in a trailer a few hundred yards away were too far away to hear me scream (so I didn’t). I wondered if they would find me in the morning—fried. Of course, I did survive to tell the tale, but I know that my fear would have been less if I had not been alone. What is it that we draw from other people that is so comforting? It is not that we think that they are braver or more capable than we are. Why is there so much strength in numbers?

Not only does the company of others give us the courage to do things we would not do on our own, but we also do all kinds of things for them that we would not be willing (or able) to do for ourselves. I am not just thinking of stories of mothers who have lifted cars off children trapped beneath them.

Recently I joined a small “sitting” group that meets once a week. We sit for three-quarters of an hour. I used to meditate twice a day for half an hour, but for the last few years this has crept back to twenty minutes in the morning and nothing in the evening. Nowadays, after twenty minutes my body has programmed itself to get up from the cushion. So I wasn’t sure that I would be able to manage three-quarters of an hour comfortably. I was curious to see what would happen.

The first evening I was fidgety. The following week I settled down immediately, and when the bell sounded at the end of the session, I had a hard time surfacing again. It has continued thus ever since, and I am grateful. Perhaps the reason I am able to sit there longer has to do with not losing face. I don’t want to disturb anyone else by getting up after twenty minutes. But I think there are two other factors at work: If someone says “three-quarters of an hour,” then I don’t question it. The second harks back to what I said earlier about there being strength in numbers. If the other people in the room can do it, well then, so can I. It is a question of meeting the challenge.

One interesting facet of what happens when we are in the company of others is the shifting roles we play. My brother Chris and his middle son recently went on a safari in Africa. The group consisted of six teenage boys, a father, and a guide. Everyone ate and slept outdoors and pitched in with all the chores. I was privileged to read the communal diary that was kept, and the entry that struck me the most was by one of the boys who, after a couple of days of following behind the guide, was asked to be the leader. Instead of relying on a professional to be on the alert and not step on a snake or disturb wild animals, the young man found himself responsible for the safety, indeed the lives, of all his companions. Suddenly all his antennae were out, his senses alert. He went from being rather bored and caught up in his mosquito bites to this new and wondrous state because of his different point of view. He was traveling along the same track in the high grass, but it was now a matter of life and death. He found this enormously empowering. His whole mind and body rose to the challenge. He didn’t make a single movement without being aware of what he was doing. He wrote that taking the lead forced him to remain in the present without letting his mind wander off into dreams.

Living alone tends to make you a little selfish. In some ways, you close down rather than open up. Because you do not have to accommodate anyone else, you arrange everything just so (particularly if you happen to be me). This was brought home some years back when I invited someone to live with me. The first evening after he moved in, I returned from the office and he was already sitting in the living room watching television. My hackles rose. For longer than I could remember I had come through the door and decompressed gently. I didn’t want to talk to anyone for a little while after I had got off the subway. I just wanted to be quiet, to put my things down, open my mail, make a cup of tea, take my shoes off, and collapse on the sofa. Only then did I feel up to communicating with other people.

That first evening I watched how I felt, and I didn’t say anything. After all, I was the one who had invited him into the house. He came, I realized ruefully, with his own habits, and I would need to welcome those too. But the second night it upset me even more, and so I told him how I felt and asked him if I could have just five minutes’ quiet. This was all I needed. After that, he was nice enough to turn the television off as soon as he heard my key in the door and ask me later if it was okay to turn it back on. It is always the little things that get on our nerves.

As I said earlier, Neil and I went out on only one date before he asked me to marry him ten days later. I suspect that it was something he said that first evening that convinced me to say yes. We were eating dinner at his favorite French restaurant, and I was regaling him with my customary patter. For some time he watched me without saying anything. Indeed, I don’t think he was really listening. He was just observing me. And then he leaned forward and said, “Why do you always hold yourself back?”

I stopped in my tracks. No one had ever noticed this before. Indeed, I had never even acknowledged to myself that I used my ability to tell stories as a kind of articulate armor that would protect me from all slings and arrows. I didn’t know how to respond, but I was grateful that someone had at last spotted this. I felt both uncovered and discovered—disarmed but acknowledged. This was a level of honesty I had rarely encountered. I suspect that I hoped that this would be just the first of many revelations. Here was a man who would act as my mirror, reflecting back to me the things about myself that I needed to know.

Unfortunately, this was the only occasion on which he did this. Still, it provided enough of a shock to show me that my defenses needed to come down fast if I wanted a true meeting with another human being. I became aware that it is not possible to meet anyone if you are not available. Many of us try to protect ourselves in this way, but we need to remember that walls keep out not only our enemies but also our friends. Since that time I have done my best to be available to anyone or anything that needs me. I don’t always manage it, but I try.

This word available is an interesting word. It turns out that avail, meaning “to be of use, assist, or help” comes from the Latin valere, “to be strong, to be worthy.” This is remarkable, in that when I was younger, I wanted to be useful, and now I try to be available. I had thought that they were two different concepts but now that I have consulted a dictionary, I see how they are related. Also, I understand why being available to others carries with it such a sense of strength and value. It is right there in the root of the word.

When I began working at Knopf, it was as Bob Gottlieb’s assistant, but gradually I took on other roles as well. For one thing, I started to sell reprint rights, which are the licensing rights to reproduce a company’s books in paperback and other formats. It was a given at Knopf in the early 1970s that anyone could edit books, provided they didn’t stint on the job for which they were being paid. So, although I had no degree, I soon found myself acquiring books that interested me, particularly books of spiritual teaching. As my small list of books and authors grew, I saw them as providing “good company” for the people who read them. Plotinus expressed it well:

For the absolute good is the cause and source of all beauty, just as the sun is the source of all daylight, and it cannot therefore be spoken or written; yet we speak and write of it, in order to start and escort ourselves on the way, and arouse our minds to the vision: like as when one showeth a pilgrim on his way to some shrine that he would visit: for the teaching is only of whither and how to go, the vision itself is the work of him who hath willed to see.

After I had edited fifty books, I asked if I could start an imprint at Random House devoted exclusively to spiritual books, books that nourish the soul, illuminate the mind, and speak directly to the heart, and in 1989 I was given the go-ahead to create an imprint as part of Harmony which already published books of a similar nature. When the question of a name came up, I suggested “In Good Company,” my idea being that each title would be “A Good Companion” that would “escort pilgrims on the way.” The powers-that-be vetoed this idea, declaring that it sounded like a bevy of old ladies in a retirement home, so reluctantly I chose another name: Bell Tower.

I worked for some months to distill the essence of what I had learned in my life so far, teachings I wanted to share with the world at large. When Bell Tower’s first three books were published in the spring of 1991, this message appeared in calligraphy on a small bookmark in each copy:

The pure sound of the bell summons us into the present moment.
The timeless ring of truth is expressed in many different voices,
each one magnifying and illuminating the sacred.
The clarity of its song resonates within us
and calls us away from those things which often distract us
—that which was, that which might be—
to That Which Is.

At the end of 1996 I was on a retreat with meditation teacher Toni Packer at the Santa Sabina Center in San Rafael, California. One day, as I was silently pacing around the cloister, I spotted something familiar on one of the tables. There was a big poster of Thomas Merton and before it a candle and a tall, thin piece of calligraphy. When I stopped to read it, my heart stopped too. It was a blow-up of the bookmark. Later (when we were allowed to speak again), I discovered that the nuns liked the statement so much they used it at the beginning of many of their workshops. Finding what I had written five years earlier on display three thousand miles away was a very heartwarming experience. It showed me that there was indeed a universal sangha, a company of men and women on the path of truth who appreciated the signposts I had erected.

I spoke earlier about not taking what is not yours unless it is freely offered. The other side of the coin is making sure to share with others what you believe is yours. By which I mean everything that is currently in your possession. I mentioned earlier that all the stuff that we are currently responsible for—goods, money, a house, a car—is just ours for the time being. Like us, it is just passing through creation. Sometimes when I spend more money on something than I feel comfortable with, I tell myself that I am helping the economy. What goes around comes around. If you continually offer to others what you have right now, the chances are that whatever you need later will find its way to you from one source or another. I visited Russia not long after the breakup of the Soviet Union. None of the people I met seemed to have a ruble to their name but I discovered that whenever a friend, neighbor, or relative needed money for an emergency, everyone pitched in. Wherever this loan money came from (and I never found out the answer to that question), it seemed to circulate in the atmosphere, always becoming available to whoever needed it. If we don’t put a strong claim on our possessions, then we don’t feel a lack when we pass them on to others.

Although I enjoy being alone for periods of time, I am happiest in the company of others. This is because in another person it is always possible to see our own reflection, to see who we really are. You need to be still for this to happen, or there is a distortion in the mirror. You also need to be quiet. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does … Perhaps this is why we are all so drawn to babies. We want to gaze directly into their eyes. We want to see and be seen. The same thing happens when we are in love. In ordinary life so much time is spent in talking, in avoiding other people’s eyes. But when (at last) you are comfortable with someone else alone and in silence, just looking, there is a true meeting, and words drop away. They no longer have a place. They are a distraction, a limitation, a hindrance to the blazing fullness of it all.