Encounter in human beings is always to a greater or lesser extent anxiety-creating as well as joy-creating. I think these effects arise out of the fact that genuine encounter with another person always shakes our self-world relationship: our comfortable temporary security of the moment before is thrown into question, we are opened, made tentative for an instant—shall we risk ourselves, take the chance to be enriched by this new relationship (and even if it is a friend or loved one of long standing, this particular moment of relationship is still new) or shall we brace ourselves, throw up a
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