Freedom in anonymity
We spend our lives thinking that people are watching.
We think about what others will think before doing something.
Get Maham Asif’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But others are doing the same. They aren’t thinking of how others look, they are thinking about how they would look in peoples’ eyes.
The audience is empty. Everyone is busy acting for his own show, no one has time to sit and watch anyone else’s. It’s a show after a show, empty rooms after rooms, with no one but one person acting in front of an imagined audience. All people see of their act is just a passing glimpse at the stage, forgetting about it the next day.
Even if someone decided to sit and watch, he would leave and live his life with only a fading memory of the act.
But a person who knows he doesn’t matter much to others, becomes free of the expectations of the invisible crowd. He stops running and realizes that he was running against a clock someone else drew on paper. The cameras weren’t actually rolling, there was no audience, and there’s no expectation to be special. So no one has to convince himself that he is.
