There are some people you can't quite be yourself around. Not because they're unkind. Because something in you gets quieter when they walk into the room, and you can't say exactly when it started.

The hardest version of this isn't around the people we dislike. It's around the ones we love — the ones whose presence we've chosen, over and over, and still, some old part of us gets small when they're near, and we don't know we're doing it.

This episode is about the very old part of the nervous system that quietly adjusts your size in the presence of something larger — and about the small, quiet moment when you notice you've done it.

Finnegan walks toward an overlook he loves and finds an old stag in his path. He takes the long way. Something in him goes softer at the edges. Not fear. Something older than fear.

Inside: a story  ...