March 31, 2010
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Nosce Te Ipsum
The prize of not being famous is to be able to retreat into solitude. What a nightmare it must be to have millions of people think about you and voice their opinions and judgments of you; to be invisible is a great treasure.
What other people think of you invades your thinking, even when you are alone. That is why a key component of knowing yourself is not spending a lot of time around people who don’t. When we listen and talk to people who don’t know us, we tacitly see their concept of us, and the person we started as slowly vanishes, even in our own minds. Thus, when we finally find ourselves alone, we first see who others see us as, and have to tear through the gauze until we get back to the eyes we had when we first entered the world.
I find we slowly disappear as we play new roles in people’s lives; our initial reaction to life becomes a dim memory of the faintly echoing past. A friend who knows that old soul of yours, who knows what you fundamentally mean when you say things, is thus something dearly irreplaceable. You find yourself in solitude when you are with them.
Life in a small theatre of people who know you thus seems the only life worth living; to be put in the spotlight on the large stage is to disappear to ourselves completely. Celebrities are people who are known by the most people and are therefore the least known. It is a paradox which reminds us that as strangers on earth there is not much use in living as anyone other than ourselves.
After all, how can we ever work out our salvation if we can’t even see ourselves, if solitude is impossible? Thus, if this life is indeed meant for working out our salvation with fear and trembling, then certainly to be invisible to the eyes of the masses is a great treasure.
Comments (9)
this is a very insightful read.
This could have been taken from “The Imitation of Christ”. Very wise words here.
Amazing insights. And applicable not just to celebrities but to anyone who is only seen through a filter of preconceptions. Lately I have been chasing that solitude myself. A rec from me.
This is quite thought provoking!
You make me think about things in a way that I didn’t before I read what you write.
” That is why a key component of knowing yourself is not spending a lot of time around people who don’t.”
This is very wise advice. I often struggle with (by which I mean drive myself crazy with) the not-knowing of what other people think of me. The more time I spend around people who don’t know me well, which is most people, the more I question my own skills and everything about myself.
Interesting. I will have to take care in constructing a response… I don’t know exactly how to say it yet, but I do know that I don’t entirely agree with you.
I originally read this via my email and by the time I got back to your page I had forgotten what I was going to say. >>>> let me refresh >>>>
I like your conclusion. being invisible is a good place to be at least under the circumstances of your example… of course.
I don’t know…. I agree, but I don’t at the same time, since [personally] I’m at the paradoxyl point in my life where I’m trying to get away from the people who know me well in order to be the me I will become.