you're not the main character in everyone's story

Now before anyone gets mad, I’m not saying that you’re not important, or that you don’t matter. In fact, what I’m saying is the complete opposite. I suppose picking up on subtlety is often times hard when one is filled with illusions of grandeur. In fact, this is something that is quite personal for me. In some strange way, despite my social anxiety and my desire for conscientuousness, I’ve often time craved the attention of those I’m close with in more ways than one.

Everyone desires love, in fact I’d go so far as to say, that there is no other reason we continue to dredge on with what sometimes feels like a “meaningless existence”. That might be a loaded statement, but I think there’s at least a modicum of truth to my words here. It’s so incredibly easy to get attach your idea of self worth to the opinions of others, and to some extent, I’d argue that that’s a good thing! It drives us to be better, to do better, to be more than what we are right now, to be more than what we were yesterday. Like all things in life however, there is a fine line between being driven by the opinions of others and letting the opinions of others drive you.

Balance is hard! I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I have it all figured out. Despite a newfound self awareness on my part, I still grapple with the same issues I’ve had for the past few years. The same insecurities, the same doubts, the same fears. Most nights, I ask myself if I’m doing enough for the people I care about, if I’m doing enough for myself, if I’m proud of the person I’ve become. Facing up to the kind of person you really are, flaws and all is a difficult thing to do. It’s easy to hide behind a facade, the character you’ve created for yourself, the person you wish you were. The allure of the perfect avatar is powerful, and while self deception releases dopamine like nothing else, it’s short-lived, and the crash that follows is often times worse than the high. You won’t feel shitty about yourself in the conventional sense, but you’ll lose a part of your identity, a much more insidious fate if you ask me.

So, what does this off-tangent tirade have to do with the title of this post? Well, I think the reason we’re as concerned as we are with the opinion of others is because we’re trying to play a central part in their lives. I don’t know if I’m speaking for everybody here, but this has at least been somewhat true for me. I’d like to think that I’m naturally an empathetic person, but sometimes I’ve found that my desire for helping others out trumps what they’re asking for in the first place. It’s not your job to fix everyone’s problems, and while this is not to say you shouldn’t help out when you can, it’s to say that the most important things in these types of situations is to listen, and give people the space to figure things out for themselves.

So say it with me folks; you’re not the main character in everyone’s story. In fact it’s almost unereasonable to think that you are. The world is a big place, and there are a lot of people in it. Behind every single one of them is a story, a story that is just as important as yours, a culture just as rich. There is something so incredibly powerful about letting other people take the reigns of their own lives. There is something masculine, something feminine, and if you happen to identify with gender identities that are outside the conventional dichotomy, there is something humane about being an observer to the lives of others. Everyone wants to help the world. Start instead with helping a single person in it. I promise you, that the rest will follow and while you may not be the protagonist in everyone’s story, you are the narrator of your own. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s something worth celebrating.

~Lukshya