A snapshot of a memory: I’m seven or eight, at church, sitting in a short pew with my mom and sister. The choir is to our left, where my father stands with about half the teachers from my school. Sunlight streams in through the skylights onto the wooden altar steps. The choir sings—pretty, polyphonic, a song I’ve heard since before my memory formed.

All of a sudden, I understood something (why then? Triggered by what? No clue): that each of these people standing around me, singing or not singing, part of my school or not: all had a person behind their eyes, just like I did.

They each had a world inside themselves, with thoughts they weren’t saying and feelings I didn’t know about. They were not just bodies but selves. Like me.

That this epiphany came to me at church—coincidence? I don’t know. It felt like one at the time. But maybe not. Maybe the purpose of religion, spirituality, whatever, is for us to understand exactly that: that other people are real. That we are responsible to them. And that we are not alone.

Suddenly I was surrounded by walking universes, people with as much complexity and depth and inner life as me. Or rather, now I was aware of it. They had been there all along.

*

Another memory, related:

My early twenties. Babysitting in Ithaca, New York. I had just picked up 3-year-old Owen from daycare.

At home, while making us quesadillas, I asked him, “How was school?”

He launched into a story about how the police had almost come, because he and his friends had drawn mustaches on themselves after the teacher told them not to.

“I don’t think the police were going to come,” I said.

“Yes, they were. The teacher told us not to draw fake mustaches on ourselves.”

“I know, but the police wouldn’t mind if you did that. They’re here to make sure you don’t hurt other people, or yourself.”

Randomly he began punching himself in the head. “Did you know that you can only hurt yourself?” he said.

I frown-laughed, and tried to get him to stop punching himself. “No, you can hurt other people, too,” I said.

He froze. “YOU CAN HURT OTHER PEOPLE?”

“Yes.”

Pause. “But you can only hurt yourself, right?”

Confusion all around. Then it came to me: I was dealing with a tiny solipsist, a victim of the slippery definition of the word “can.”

“No, no, no!” I said, desperate to straighten this out as soon as possible, before this belief crystallized in his so-young brain. “You CAN hurt other people.” He looked baffled. “No, what I mean is, it’s POSSIBLE to hurt other people. That’s why we need to be gentle with others. Your teacher was saying you’re not ALLOWED to.”

“Oh,” he said, still confused. But then our quesadillas were ready, and we sat down to eat, talking about other things.

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