You can be close to people and still keep a few rooms in yourself private. That’s not distance, that’s a home.

Being known completely is not the point of closeness. Keeping some of yourself unshared is how you stay a person rather than a shared resource, and the people nearest you generally do the same whether they say so or not. That privacy is not a wall, it is more like one closed room in a house full of open doors.

Notice what you keep private and check that it is by choice rather than from fear of being judged. Keep one practice entirely to yourself, a notebook, a walk, a thought you never float. Then be generous with the rest, because privacy only works alongside real closeness.