On being insignificant
On being insignificant
and yet important
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
When I was younger, the more important people were, the more difficult it was to make contact with them.
It was a mark of my low status in many jobs that I was on call, at a moments notice. My boss would expect me to answer the phone or call him back “real quick”. This was a boss of mine from America. A go-getting, work driven aspiring media tycoon. My status meant that I had to be on call. All the time. Even when I took the train home, tired, arriving back at about 8pm, I would sometimes find messages on my answerphone telling me to do this or that. Never a please.
Once, when working in a TV documentary company, I failed to get back to a director on the weekend and had a huge dressing down from when I went back to work on the Monday.
This is still relevant today. Very important people are not easily accessible. You can’t just pick up the phone and expect to (a) find their number and (b) call and be answered by them. No, they will have a barrage of gatekeepers, assistants and other people shielding them from the distractions and requests of mere mortals like you and me.
Maybe they have a PA to handle emails, calls and letters. Probably even the means to get in touch with them will be obfuscated. They’ll be safely hidden behind companies whilst real addresses, emails and phone numbers will be kept very, very private.
If this is how very important people live, why then do the majority of us feel that always on, always available is actually a good idea, a mark of honour?
Our egos want us to think that we are central to the world around us functioning as it should be. We are indispensable, irreplaceable. Our ego tells us that we are important, therefore it’s vital that we are ready to save the day, to be in demand, to hustle and solve things, to put out fires. We must check and respond, straight away.
And this is magnified by the snack-oil chicanery that social media and apps and smart phones employ relentlessly to wear us down, keep us providing the crude oil of attention and data to their money making plans. Check for update, swipe, refresh.
35 new notifications! I’m important, all of these things need MY attention, NOW. I’m in demand, I MATTER!!
One evening, many years ago I was going through a pretty tough time. Poor mental health and personal problems had hit me hard. I was not functioning very well. I was off work. I was getting help to heal. I went outside into the small back garden of my house. It was a cold, clear winters evening. I looked up and saw the stars. As my eyes accustomed to the darkness, more and more of them unveiled themselves. With no clouds in sight the whole universe was opening up above my head. I sat down and just stared. Then I relaxed into wonder. So many stars and planets out there. So much space. Billions and billions of miles of universe. How small was I? How utterly insignificant yet at the same time how amazingly special to actually exist and be a part of this vastness.
For more than half an hour I had time to just sit and gawp. And as I did so, the realisation of just how small a part I was of all this, hit me very hard. I smiled. This view gave me a sense of relief. My ego was shrinking. There were things so much bigger than me. And they all worked together perfectly. I was small. I did not have to feel the weight of the world on my shoulders as I was insignificant in the grand scale of a whole universe up there. The world did not and would never revolve around me.
The apps, the notifications, the need to have the smartphone are all created by highly paid, clever men and women in silicon valley. They are smart and well paid. The companies they work for are wealthy beyond imagination and hold huge amounts of power. But they lie.
They lie when they whisper in your ear that you are very important. That being on top of these dings and pings is important. That you must reply. You must check. You must be on top of it all. Lies, all of it.
You are insignificant. You are a tiny piece of the universe, just like the cloud floating above, or the fly buzzing around you in warm summer air. You do not matter to the vast majority of people. The world will not stop revolving on your behalf. You are a tiny part of a huge world.
But you are also amazing. The fact that you exist at all for this smear of life, based upon universe time, is a miracle. You are a minute, yet amazing cog in all of this. And you can do amazing things and have amazing experiences like looking up to the stars on a clear dark night, if only you stop and give yourself permission to do so.
As an amazing person, you are important, to the small group of real friends and family and people you encounter day to day. So build your own system to defend your precious life and time from interruptions, other people’s agendas and algorithms trying to constantly control your behaviour and actions. Be more like the old bosses and celebrities and build your defences so the bad actors cannot get to you. Protect your real life. It’s actually all that you have.
Turn off the notifications, ditch the apps, kill the screens for a while and stop and think of how much of your real and precious life you are spending in artificial digital universes. Relish how unimportant you are.
Switch off, get outside, look up and breath.
And then, maybe you’ll start to smile again.
P.S. This newsletter is free to all. But if you enjoy it or would you’d like to support my work both here and on my blog, there are a number of ways you can help me.
You can become a patron with a paid subscription.
You can buy me a coffee/beer
You can leave a like by clicking the ❤️ below. It really helps more people find my work.
You can spread the love by sharing this newsletter with a friend who might enjoy it.