I love thinking about my brain. I picture its pathways all lit up and blinking like cars on the highway at night, thick and bright in the areas where I barely have to think about something at all, the neurons firing so smoothly, the trajectory so effortless. Look how they light up when I harmonize with the radio, when a woman who reminds me of my mom looks upset, when I think about each individual person I love.

Tonight I spent almost 3 hours in four successive conversations that started with someone wanting to share something with me. One of them I hadn’t talked to in at least a couple years. This weekend, someone I have never actually hung out with pulled me aside for an hour and told me something they had not told anyone else in their lives. I think about how many stories I take in, how many other lives and thoughts and feelings I am thinking about. How brightly they light up my neural highways.

It feels like I’m flaunting these intimacies like blue ribbons, so I will say, I am not always a good friend. I am not always a good listener. I get lost in my own flurry of anxiety instead of taking in someone else’s reality, even when their reality is medicine to my worries. But I am also very aware of my gaps, the dead ends in my brain when the subject is politics, money, how machines and elements work. How small and stupid I feel, and how hopeful I am that my energy is being diverted to something else that is at least a little important. I remind myself: if you asked me about any number of people, I could tell you what and whom is most important to them, how they start a conversation when they’re upset, the walls they are constantly running into, whether they will respond better to a question or a blunt truth.

I study myself. I study feelings. I study people. It is not logical, not linear, often contradictory, hard and painful to look at. It is opening. It nurtures trust. It is important.