Have you ever worried about who sees you and who doesn’t? Almost everyone will claim that they don’t care whether anybody is paying attention to them and what they think. It’s a lie, though. Maybe one person in a million can truly say that it does not matter to them whether they are visible or not. For me, this was an endless obsession, and it didn’t help a bit that millions of others were in the same situation. But now I know that it’s possible to shed this madness. Wouldn’t you like to join me?
My story goes like this: from the first day, my life was about being seen and not being seen. Adults watched and controlled. Other children were curious or observant. Much of the time, it was impossible to get away from other people’s eyes. What’s more, in my religious upbringing, a deity was always paying attention and seeing everything. Early on, I never gave this much thought—it was my natural condition. Eventually, I understood that I was not alone in carrying this strange load. Many, many others also worried all day long about being seen and not being seen. I will never know if any of them got through and past that predicament.
When I was a child, parents, teachers, family members, parish priests, and benevolent neighbors encouraged me to raise my hand, speak up, speak louder, be seen, be remembered, stand out, raise myself up. I tried that, but it did not come naturally. I didn’t care enough for people to want to make an impression, and the cats and dogs and birds I loved did not need me to put on a show for them. When, for about eight years, I was an obese young person, endlessly bullied at school, being visible was hell. I wished for nothing as much and often as invisibility. I remember extensive, sweet reveries showing me how simple and pleasant life could be if only I could move through the world without anyone looking at me.
When, through a sudden stroke of luck, I lost weight and joined the races, invisibility no longer served me. If I liked it or not, I had to expose myself and wave my little flag. Being a good student, a deserving worker, boyfriend material, an interesting person, or a writer and artist worth paying attention to—all these things required bright lights and as much visibility as possible. I did whatever I could, but my nature got in the way. Except for a few persons I genuinely cared about, I still had no real interest in people, especially if they came in groups and crowds. I liked being alone, reading or writing or drawing something, and giving it to somebody or throwing it away when I was done. Also, I lacked outstanding talents and didn’t enjoy working hard—two more strikes against visibility.
However, I was extremely lucky, because I met kind, understanding people. They offered love, paved my way toward well-paying, sometimes interesting work, helped me out when I was in between things, and pointed me in promising directions. Their generosity more than made up for my lack of motivation and talent. At times, thanks to them, I was in positions of visibility, fortunately never for long. What I still liked most was being at home in a quiet space, maybe with a trusted partner, a cat or two, a book, a pencil, a piece of paper.
Along the way, I learned to meditate and continue walking onward, no matter what. I met clueless and “enlightened” people on various paths, and consumed teachings about the illusory nature of the self we invent and present to ourselves and the world. These made sense, although I also found that “spiritual” environments were as full of imperial egos and false hopes as the rest of the world. I saw that my long-ago striving for invisibility and my reluctant pursuit of visibility came from the same place of pain and despair, of not wanting the world to grind me to dust. Neither of them could help me, because they required maintaining a nightmarish artifice.
Eventually, I figured out that being a human person was not at all what I had dreamed all these years. It was simpler, humbler, more beautiful, more devastating than I ever imagined. Life, the world, the wind and the waves did not care whether I thought of myself as visible or invisible. These things didn’t ever matter, although at the time I had what seemed like good reasons to wish for them. In my early fifties I found that life’s trickery had brought me to a kind of fulfillment of my old goal of invisibility at a time when I didn’t care about it anymore.
This is what happened that day: I stood at a drugstore counter on State Street in Santa Barbara and was overlooked. I watched the other customers and the people working. It wasn’t that they preferred to do business with each other and make me wait, or that they had some reason to treat me badly. I knew that they genuinely did not see me and that the reason why did not matter. Maybe I was standing in a poorly lit spot, had not made eye contact, or had not properly tried to draw attention to myself. I found this moment remarkable and, in a way, liberating, but it did not make me happy or unhappy.
More, similar incidents occurred. I sometimes ascribed them to my age, or rather, the age difference between me and other people. Eventually, practically everybody, everywhere, was so imprisoned by smartphones and other screens that nobody saw anybody anymore. At that point, experiences of invisibility and anonymity became impersonal and ubiquitous. They pervaded the entire culture. Maybe that helps explain so many people’s desperate fascination with celebrities and stars, the people who are forever in the bright lights.
No longer having to strive ceaselessly to be visible or invisible brought unexpected relief. It made it possible to write, draw, or say something without having to wear a mask or a costume. At least for short periods, I could be comfortable and feel, for want of a better word, unfragmented. I’ll never be one of those people who evangelize loudly and in bright colors on behalf of blissful ecstasy or passionate annihilation. Those are blunt simplifications that don’t do justice to life as I experience it.
Can we help each other get out from under the glaring punishment of having to be visible or invisible? We all matter because we are alive and leave imprints and echoes wherever we go, but not because any one of us is more deserving, gifted, chosen, or special. Understanding this can give us freedom to be whoever, almost anywhere. To do anything and keep discovering. When causes and missions are urgent and demand us to do something, we can act without activating that part of us that worries about the glory of visibility or the shame of remaining unseen. We can learn a language or a skill because we find it worthwhile, not because we want to impress ourselves or other people. We can visit places, attend concerts, or read books because they call to us, not because they help us construct a desirable version of self or erase one that we would prefer to hide. We can even wear something because we like it and it suits us, no matter how it appears in others’ eyes.
I’m a slow learner. It took me almost seven decades to get to where I am now. Maybe you don’t need that much time. But it’s totally fine if you do. After all, nobody’s watching.
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