As creatures with diverse experiences, needs, and desires, we get along better with some people than with others. I had an image tonight of walking up a long mountain trail with a less-than-compatible aquaintance, but in complete silence, companionable silence. How would that shift things? I don't know, but I found that just imagining it made everything softer. Just as little kids read aloud better to dogs than to other humans, maybe we sometimes could use more companion, less chatter. There is something about shared silence that can reach through the distractions, through the shallow bickering to the core, to what binds us all in our human suffering, in our one love.