The more I read about theories of mind, the more I’ve come to see my interior life as a hall of mirrors, capable of all kinds of tricks and sleights of hand.

Sharif will be frightened by how little he knows the people he knows best. Despite knowing how they'd behave and what they'd say in most situations, there will hardly be any sense of their inward experience. He won't feel seen in this way by them either. The walls of himself will isolate him almost entirely. And even within his own borders, it will

Nobody could reach my true self—my mind—which resided elsewhere. My true self was the brain that consumed books in bed each morning with an absorption so deep I often forgot to eat. And yet this “real” self was so ephemeral. It existed in perfect isolation, without witness, and seemed to change from one day to the next.