I was just a kid, I’d done something dumb, was walking around like Judas at a reunion of the Twelve Apostles, until an adult stepped in and said, “There ain’t a single Chin in China that even knows you’re alive.” I wasn’t old enough to spell Perspective, but that-right-there, that was It.
Ah, I’d have thought, if I was thinking back then, ‘being a minnow has its moments!’
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Everybody Wants Their Fifteen Minutes
Don’t we all start out as nobodies? The whole five-going-on-six hurry-up-to-grow-up, that’s all about finally getting somewhere, and finally being somebody.
I’ve watched a bunch of people plant their flag, and pay money to get some wind action. Locally, it’s the lawyer on the billboard… it’s the zany entrepreneur with the corny hometown commercials on the local station… and on TV, in the era of reality shows, there’s no end to people making fools of themselves for their Fifteen Minutes of Fame.
I am not without charm. Catch is, it only comes in coffee sweetener sized packs. I can be the life of the party, if the party is only 5 minutes long, and I only need to shine for 90 seconds, and bluff the rest of the way.
Most of the time I’m a quiet guy, with a hungry mind, and I’m rarely bored alone. But…I do get the social itch, which is why the next paragraph is about me being at a social thing…
…as promised, here’s that paragraph… So there I was, at a social thing, in this town where I dwell, in this town where I own a business, in this town where things I write are written to be read. My business is uncommon, my writing is uncommon, and I guess it follows, that I don’t consider myself common, but at this function I might as well have been sheetrock on the wall.
I was anonymous. Alive, all these decades, and still a minnow.
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Coffee With POTUS
Two famous people were having a chat. One was Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, actor, yadda yadda, and the other was President Obama. They were seated at a table in a break room at the White House, having a conversation over coffee.
When you’re the President, and the conversation happens at the White House, you set the conversational agenda. Pres. Obama, he brings up Anonymity. He figured Seinfeld would understand, in a way you and I cannot.
He didn’t say it, but I think I read him, that Pres. Obama was mourning something not valued until it was lost. Anonymity: he’d had it, and now he’d crossed a line, and he’d never have it again. Nor would his wife, nor would his children. Forever and ever. You want to stick a price on that, get ready for some zeros…
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The Grace Of Anonymity
Years ago I was on the cover of a magazine. Same ole Joe Me as yesterday, until I walked into a grocery store and there I was, staring back at me from a rack, and it just put the weird on me. I was so self conscious; I went in there for two hundred bucks worth of grub and left with only coffee and bread.
The best of me comes from the quiet within me. Something warns me that fame would mean the end of something rare, and essential.
It’s easy to be in motion with your life. It’s incredibly hard to find the motion that makes sense for you. Even the best of us have wasted full years, doing, being, chasing, and nothing to show but That Dog Don’t Hunt. Anonymity gives us an easier option to say Oops, let me try something else.
Life is loud. Anonymity is quiet. And it has so few mirrors.
In anonymity we get to live original days, which can add up to original lives.
My dad, he used to say, “Every once in a while people just need someone to say to them, ‘I see you!’” It is that simple. At that social thing, I was hungry for that, and I didn’t get it, but that’s okay. The best of me is found in the quiet of me, and if that costs me a little validation, then I consider it pennies lost in the seat cushion, for what I gain in freedom by casting a small shadow.
I have a feeling that there are great and powerful people out there who are trapped in fame, and they would look at me and my thin, simple life, and go, ‘O man, what I’d give for just one day of that…’
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This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we remind you that Somebody Up There really does See You.
Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories can be found on Eighty-one’s Facebook page. He can be reached at 81creativity@gmail.com.
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