I am Craving Anonymity

To hide in plain sight Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash

As a kid I was living on the green grass, hoping to make a name for myself. The dirt embraced me with no judgment. It looked after me, like many of its other young ones.

The dream washed away like the mud on a slope under torrential rains. Just to be replaced by a realistic layer of quicksand. As an adult, dreams are like quicksand. The more you hold on to them, the more they slip away.

What remains is the void of depleting self-worth.

We live many lives in our short lifetime carelessly partitioned into a prologue, an overwhelming facet of seemingly meaningful chapters, and finally the epilogue. The chapters are punctuated with milestones and experiences. Each providing a unique identity to the individual that we turn out to be. We toil to our limits so that we leave a notable legacy. Recognition.

Today, the best part of our life is lived under appreciation and recognition that each of us is somebody. It is fueled by a system that rewards for existence. Crisis, existential crisis? What crisis? We are and therefore we need to be recognized. Handed to us on a silver plate, an inheritance of privileged existence.

I, part of this system, somewhat look back at that boy in the mud and wonder if the trade-off between the anonymity of the ignorant satisfied boy in mud and this recognition of just being, was worth its price.

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