On being seen and being invisible.

You could be forgiven for believing, as most of us do at some point, hell at many points

in our lives, that the world is watching you.

Turn on any video or movie and the world is very neatly divided into two kinds of actors,

the main characters and the extras.

The main characters are the ones who drive the story.

The ones whose lives, whose minute and trivial trials and tribulations, whose sufferings

and joys infuse the story with heart and movement.

The extras are, of course, forgettable.

They clap in the background.

They dine at the tables adjacent to the action.

Extras are in the frame, true, but two seconds after the scene shifts, you've forgotten them.

I'm going to tell you something here that may sound harsh, but is nonetheless true, and if you really digest it, should offer you tremendous comfort.

You are an extra. Nearly everyone, most of the time, is an extra. Right now, at this very moment,

there are but a tiny handful of people in the world thinking about you. Now, maybe that sounds harsh, but it's not.

Here's what I mean. Just because you are the leading men in the story of your own lives doesn't

mean that yours is the story that's being told. Your story is mostly the story you tell to yourself.

The audience of your story is much more limited

than you will intuitively believe. Most of the hours of most of your life, the primary audience

for the story of you is just you. What this means is that most of the time, even if someone sees you, they are not

invested. They are not forming opinions of you or incorporating you into their story. There's a name

for this and it's called the spotlight effect and it is the mistaken belief that you are being noticed

...