1. ON BEING COMPANIONS
The faces of my online companions appear on my computer screen, side by side, in two rows, each enclosed in a box. We look at each other from six corners of the earth, through distances that are bridged by online connections, through the miracle of electronics.
I greet my companions with a smile. Who knows where each one of them is sitting now. I imagine the walls that are hidden from the camera, the windows that open to a street or a garden, the clothes that are thrown on the floor. Maybe a dog or a husband is sitting in the corner.
And yet we are together. Because my words resonate with your words, because our thoughts are intertwined together, like different branches in the same thick forest. For the duration of 90 minutes we are different threads woven together into a multi-color fabric of thought and insight.
And this means philosophical companions – not I versus you, not declaring personal opinions, but standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the same choir of singers, composing new understandings in philosophical togetherness.
