What makes this observation bracing is its rejection of the mentor-student binary that dominates how we think about friendship—Camus isn't being humble here, he's being honest about the limits of influence itself. True companionship requires us to abandon the fantasy that one person can chart the course for another, that closeness means alignment. A marriage thrives not when one partner shapes the other into an ideal, but when both resist that temptation entirely and simply move through life as separate people who happen to choose each other's presence.