This past week, my dorm did "Crossing the Line" — an activity in which a group of people stand on one side of the room, and cross a line on the floor when their answer to a question posed by the moderator is yes. It seems like a simple premise — but the questions asked are not so simple. Perhaps the hardest part of the experience is to cross the line and then turn around to face those who didn’t — and to be confronted by whatever that means.

I came into the event knowing it would be hard because it demanded vulnerability — but what I ended up learning was so different than what I expected.

Looking at the people in your community, and being witness to their answers is an integral part of "Crossing the Line," and it is the part I failed in. So many of the admissions were so deeply personal that I was deafened by shame — not at what I was revealing about myself, but that I did not deserve this kind of honesty from these people - that I hadn't worked hard enough to earn the privilege of knowing them in these more meaningful ways.

I felt so unworthy of looking someone in the eye when they were admitting something personal, that I simply didn't do it. I was terrified of seeming like I was trying to lay claim to understanding them when I didn’t, as being seen as someone so presumptuous. But afterward, during our discussion, someone spoke about how much it meant to them when someone else looked them in the eye. And I’ve never felt so stupid — or so sure that I’d let myself down.

And all I could think about after was this podcast about superpowers, and the question asked was, if you could choose between being able to fly, and being invisible, what would you choose?

And people have a lot of replies, but towards the end, a woman says she thinks everyone actually wants to be invisible. She said those who picked flight probably picked it because they want to be the kind of person who would pick flying — but the desire for invisibility points to who they are afraid they actually are. And she tied it to this feeling of shame — because we don’t want to be looked at while looking at something.

Of course, the most obvious example of this is television, and the very David Foster Wallace articulation of our addiction to watching people, to being witness without having to put on an act ourselves.

Which makes so much sense to me — that being conscious of being seen, of trying to decide how you want to be seen — stops you from actually seeing others.

During "Crossing the Line," I was scared and ashamed — I didn’t want to be seen as someone claiming intimacy I wasn’t deserving of. But I came to realize that these internal fears could easily be seen by someone being vulnerable as me rejecting their attempt to reveal something about themselves.

And the solution is so simple: I just have to step outside myself and try to imagine how the other person thinks they’re being seen — all I had to do is care enough about them to pay attention to them.

But while the answer is simple, it is also immensely challenging. Still, thinking about it in those terms helps — and so does looking at art and poetry.

What people find the most ridiculous about painting and poetry - that someone could spend years on something so seemingly insignificant - is what I love most about it: That to somebody, a sycamore tree means so much, That waking up that particular morning meant so much. That there are people who care about things so intensely, so irrationally.

Because painting something, or writing about it, or capturing it in some way, is so often an act of love. And we do it because we love looking, and really seeing, at other people, and yet find it immensely hard to do it.

Paintings, after all, are labors of love culminating in a figure or a scene that would otherwise be unseen or passed by. Art is pausing to look again: to follow the lines of someone's wrist or to explore the texture of their hair, to get exactly right the hollow of their dimple. It is an act of caring — of caring to capture someone, or however much you can of them, because the person deserves that.

When I write something there is a constant buzzing in my ear of doubt -—and it says, "Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?"

And whenever I continue writing anyway, my answer is, "I do."

I care about this insignificant thing that happened today — I care about this tree that made me think of how much my grandmother would love it; I care about how the air smells like the possibility of rain. And every painting and poem in the world says the same thing — that it cares about something, that it paid attention to it.

I want to be able to bring that to the people I love, the people I live with, the people I pass every day without seeing — I want to give them one of the most important things that somebody can give another person — attention. Because I do care.

We spend so much time trying to figure out how we want to be seen, and how we're being seen, and who's seeing us — that we forget to look at other people. How stupid — how wasteful — to have all of these amazing people around you, people with whole worlds inside them, who have histories and futures and dreams and fears and hopes, and to never catch more than a glimpse.

Sometimes, even if you don't deserve it, you get a glimpse of somebody else in a way that is extremely rare — and in that moment, I don't want to step back because I feel unworthy — I want to be able to look them in the eye, and realize that I'm lucky that they're giving me the benefit of doubt, and I shouldn't think they're wrong for doing that.

We only have so much time, and we will only have so many opportunities, to look someone in the eye and laugh with them and hear their voice or hold their hand — and I don't want to let any more of them slip by me because I was too busy trying to seem some way.

Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

I always thought that meant giving your attention to something — or someone — was an act of generosity towards them. But "Crossing the Line" made me realize it was also the other way around.

We exist in the way we experience the world and the people around us. And by giving people your attention, by allowing people that space in your life, you can witness them unfolding into something closer to the infinite size of their inner lives — and there are very few experiences as extraordinary as being able to, even for a second, catch a glimpse of somebody's inner life.