The good colleague

Picture the person everyone on the crew is quietly glad to be working beside. Not the smartest, not the fastest, not the one with the title. The one who holds up their end, says what's true, passes the credit on, and treats the new hire the same as the boss. Every kitchen has one. Every ward, every job site, every warehouse floor knows exactly who theirs is — and who isn't.

That figure is what the whole Justice quarter has been building toward. All of it — meeting difficult people, doing your part, honesty, giving credit, fair use of power, carrying your share, letting the grudge go — lives or dies in one ordinary person doing ordinary work well, day after day.

Cicero set the task plainly: the practical virtues exist "so that the relations of man to man in human society may be conserved" (De Officiis 1.17, Miller). Conserved. Held together. That's the job under the job. The good colleague is simply the one who keeps the bond intact when it would be easier to let it fray.

This week names that person and asks you to be them — regardless of title, regardless of what comes back.