Someone else was in the room where it happened

yo chat you seeing this shit?

happy halloween, we’re so back

warning: long, and is simultaneously the most and least accessible thing I’ve ever written

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0.

I met God round the urinals at the back of the old Printworks once, he told me everything was going according to plan. I did the classic ‘floods, child cancer, famine’ thing. He didn’t seem interested. Remember that meme of the guy with the dilated pupils saying ‘there’s much pain in the world, but not in this room’? Bit like that I guess.

It’s hard to tell immediately if it’s a rite of passage that everyone deals with, or if you’ve been given some kind of secret mission. Either way, you’ve realised that your life until this point was a prologue, and now the real game is about to begin. 

But all highs are fleeting. And we’re not talking about the drugs anymore. Experience and memory have different agendas. Promotions feel good for about two weeks. No one can remember this year’s Oscar winner, let alone last year. Lacan did tell you desire perpetually displaces its aim. ‘Smile because it happened’? I don’t think that bit counts as professional advice.

Listen, I know you get this already. You pay more attention than people realise. By now you’ve worked out that feeling alone in a room full of people is your fault, not theirs. There’s no shadowy cabal benefiting from your anxiety, it’s yourself the work starts with. We’re all in this together, and even in crisis the cost of living is still more affordable than the alternative. Working that out seems liberating. ‘I was there when the rain changed direction’. But it doesn’t take long for that to dry off. I probably should’ve written some of that stuff God said down. 

Anyway, life goes on, best keep it simple. Overthink and get left behind, especially when belonging is a scarce resource. Always take the 3 for 100 and never back the early kick-off. Compliment her outfit, not her looks, because that’s the one she chose. Give her that forehead kiss so she enjoys tonight at least. For some reason it makes you feel safe too. ‘Home is where the heart is’. Great, now I have two problems. 

To an outsider it would almost seem cliche. But to you, they’re still a level behind. They think you sing Supersonic at karaoke because you want her in the corner to think you’re a bit like Liam Gallagher. What they don’t get is that you do it to show you’re so much more, and you’re only choosing to hide in plain sight. You’ve been to the pits and fought your way back. Now you get that these moments are all we have, fleeting as they may be. 

That’s it, you’ve cracked it. No more self-consciousness. Total dissolution. True authenticity. Can’t believe you used to pay that guy £60 to feel like this. 

For a second you think this might have all happened to you before. Turns out she’s thinking the same, because we’re only one verse in, and she already knows how this song ends. 

Sing it with me, it’s your last chance:

‘Nobody could see him, nobody could ever hear him call.’

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I.

From the journal Collabra Psychology comes ‘Changes in Need for Uniqueness From 2000 Until 2020’.

This paper uses data from the Gosling-Potter Personality project, a website where you can do free personality tests, which you can very much tell has been on the internet since 2000. For the purposes of this dataset, they had over 1.3 million responses to leverage from across those two decades. The fact it stops at 2020 but the paper only came out two months ago says a lot of things about academic psychology, and none of them are good.

Anyway, here’s the finding, in a sentence:

Across the 20-year period, participants who completed the survey more recently reported a lower need for uniqueness, particularly in terms of not wanting to defend their beliefs in public forums and caring more about what others think about them.

People want to be unique less than they used to? Certainly went against some of my priors, ‘main character energy’ and all that, so I thought the devil might be in the detail.

The biggest change was in how willing people were to publicly defend their beliefs - this dropped the most over time. People also became slightly more concerned about what others think of them and less inclined to break rules. While the study doesn't explain exactly why this happened, it suggests that over the past two decades, people have become more cautious about expressing themselves in ways that might make them stand out from others.

You will have immediately noticed how dangerous this territory is for interpretation. So let’s let the British Psychological Society go first:

The team has a number of suggestions as to why this may be the case. As we mentioned up top, one is that it's linked to increases in social anxiety, which might make people feel a deeper need for security and in-group acceptance. It's also possible that modern online environments which punish people for expressing outlying opinions could have moved this particular needle.

This pattern could, however, also be due to something more positive. With the rise of online communication and social media, we have more opportunities than ever to find our tribes and express ourselves how we want. A decrease in measures of our need for uniqueness could, paradoxically, be because that need is increasingly being met.

But both the BPS and the paper itself manage to make a huge assumption on your behalf. They assume a strong correlation between the behaviours people do and the way those same people interpret those behaviours. Put more simply, they think people know why they do things.

Here’s an example of what the scale the participants took looks like, to gauge their ‘need for uniqueness’, feel free to answer these in your own head:

I have no critique for the methodology itself, I’m just trying to make it clear what it’s getting at. There’s 30ish questions like this, that build a picture of a person’s behaviour, from which you can determine how often a person tends to just go with the flow, and protect themselves from the potentially critical eyes of others. If they want to stand out, or often find that’s not worth the risk of exposure.

So when we find that this drive towards sticking out from the crowd is down, I guess I can’t pretend to be surprised. The threat of the critical eyes of others has obviously inflated: instagram, peer pressure, panopticon, phone bad, whatever. If that tight argument wasn’t enough to convince you, I think Sherry Ning’s recent piece did a good job.

But the most insightful thing this scale does is actually an act of omission. It asks plenty about how people behave in a variety of social situations, how they approach conflict, and how brave they are in conversation.

But it never asks this: how unique do you think you are?

or even ‘how unique do you want to be?’

So I can’t be sure if we do have a change in the desire for uniqueness. We can only say that we’re getting worse at achieving it.

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A long held belief round these parts is that technology enables individualism, always. Just as the dishwasher meant Boomers needed human help at home less than Silents did, Google Maps meant Millenials needed to stop strangers for directions much less than Gen X did on their travels.

And thus it’s not surprising that research supports a new peak of individualism under Gen Z from various angles. They date less, they have less friends, they engage in religion less, they play team sports less. I can only guess that ten years down the line, you will be reading an article titled ‘Why Gen Zs are buying houses to live alone’.

This is also reflected in a societal and global level of increased individualistic values. People are placing more importance on chosen than inherited relationships (i.e. friends over family). More people say ‘Yes’ to ‘Is it important to teach children to be independent?’ More people say they think protecting freedom of speech is an important goal for their country than they used to.

And cultural individualism is on the rise too, if not already at an absolute peak. Every app is curated just For You, and we have all read various recycled takes on main characters and ‘What About Me?’ effects. To quote one of my fore-bearers, “most purchases this side of a bodega are autobiographical product placement”, with the ability to see your own life as a narrative in which you are the protagonist obviously being aided by social media.

Narcissism has not only increased, but has shape-shifted towards covert and benign cases. No one’s hosting lavish house parties (they don’t have friends, drink or own a house, to be fair), but self-image curation as a vehicle towards standing out as someone special has become individualistically efficient.

That’s clear right? Essay done?

Well then how come that’s not what the research at the top of this section found? How can all this be true but the need for uniqueness is still down?

Let’s pose the questions in full:

What would happen if people simultaneously held beliefs about their own specialness and had a pre-occupation with maintaining their own sense of identity, while also not actually exhibiting any behaviour that identifies them as an individual? What happens to people who believe they are outstanding but are scared of standing out? How does a population get itself in this situation in the first place?

What would happen to those people next?

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II.

Let’s restart at first principles. What is this whole human behaviour thing about?

A practical answer comes from William James’ belief that there are two major psychological projects when it comes to directing yourself:

1. What is the life I want?

2. How do I plan on getting it?

If you grant me that you weren’t born with specific answers to either of those, and can admit that you do have at least a vague shape of answers now, then you must also grant me that something happened.

The momentum of moving from A to B may have been with you since birth, but at what stage was the location of B set, and why did you decide to set it there? James didn’t solve that one on his own, but he did set in motion a century of analyses of trying to work out what exactly did happen. For some reason, the French were particularly into this.

In 1943, Sartre writes Being and Nothingness, noticing how we change our behaviour when we think someone's watching. Sit in a park and watch how differently people walk when they know others can see them.

In the 1960's, Emmanuel Levinas points out that we're born into a world of other people's faces, voices, and expectations. He thought everyone was missing something obvious: we don't start as individuals and then learn how to be social - it's the other way around.

Lacan started the 70's off by watching babies recognise themselves in mirrors. He noticed they always look back at their parent, as if asking 'is that really me?' From day one, we need other people to tell us who we are.

Rene Girard ended the decade by adding a layer pointing out something uncomfortably obvious: we don't want things because we like them. We want things because other people want them. Just look at what happens when someone else picks up a toy in a room full of kids. This is the same ‘mimetic desire’ that Aubrey Plaza’s boyfriend talked about in White Lotus for some reason.

What they were all circling around was this: there's a constant companion in your head. Not your voice, not your conscience, but a sort of invisible audience. The sum total of every expectation, judgement, and desire you've ever encountered, merged into one overwhelming presence.

That’s right kids, today we’re talking about the big bad Other.

An invisible presence that shapes our identity, desires, and actions, all resulting in the inescapable feeling that you. are. not. alone.

Ever.

So I find it unsurprising that you catch Gen Alphas addressing ‘chat’ out loud IRL. It makes sense that we have centuries of evidence of ‘felt presences’. It feels reasonable that we adapted so quickly to life with a digital audience.

Because to modern humans, that audience has always been there. Even you reading this. You certainly don’t feel alone right now, do you? You ever talked to yourself like you’re talking on a podcast?

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This is partly why I’m very interested by YouTuber apology videos. Not the bit about them doing problematic things and then everyone arguing over whether change is possible or whatever. I’m interested by the aesthetics. The theatre.

The fact that that they feel this unbearable pressure to address what’s going on. They sit down and admit to everything and beg for forgiveness. They promise to donate some amount of money to something. And the video ends.

But the scene doesn’t. Picture being stood behind the lens you watched the video through. They hit stop recording, but sit there still in tears. The room hasn’t changed at all. It’s just them there, but it just cannot feel that way. They’re still being torn apart at the seems. Imagine being a fly on the wall. Imagine two minutes earlier watching them apologise to no one. Imagine trying to explain to Sartre what was going on.

It’s scenes like this that make me think our relationship to the Other continues to evolve over time, which can see the tension it provides to get tightened even more. Because if it’s the need for the Other to direct your own life and objectify you that’s unsettling, it’s the never-ending pressure from its watchful eye that has the potential make life pretty excruciating. And yeah, all of the above names outlined that already in a sense, but did they ever think things would get this literal?

I’m not going to use that one Sartre quote that everyone uses from the play no one has read (although I am heavily implying it). I’m going to use the other one:

Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer.

Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.

All his behaviour seems to us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and even his voice seem to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing?

We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a cafe.

This guy just needed a side-gig to fund his main hustle of becoming a full person. But the second he put the apron on and learned his lines, he realised he wasn’t what diners were going to see anymore. They were going to see The Waiter. And if he doesn’t appropriately act as The Waiter, his manager is hearing about it.

So what does he do? He gives the world what it wants. Plays the role. Loses himself in it, and not in the good way. He is trying to make it seem like being a waiter is an essential part of who he is, and why he’s on Earth. Best way of keeping the diners happy. But he’s pretending, and it is so obvious how it’s crippling him. Shit gets to you.

I don’t think I have to nudge you much into the belief that this is something you can see absolutely everywhere all the time. Job roles, social expectations, aesthetics, the September photo dump, the email sign-offs, the books you leave visible in Zoom calls, the way you laugh extra hard to show you get the niche reference of a joke that was barely funny. The constant threat of being seen forcing one into wanting to be seen as something appropriate. To be seen as a genre. “I’m a corporate girlie!” What do you think about at night in the dark?

Because even though the Other is necessary to give you direction at all, it is such a cruel irony that the resulting cling to identity is what makes the assimilation of the self all the more difficult.

And it has consequences.

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III.

Saw a semi-viral tweet the other day:

dating tip: never get too attached, you never know who they’re waiting on, talking to, or missing

And a sarcastic response:

Make yourself small. Cover and hide any parts of yourself that might be used as ammo. Hide and be in fear. Be alone, even around others. The most important thing is that you never get hurt in any way ever.

I can’t help but feel this is a strong characterisation of the modern adaptation of Other-avoidance tactics. And it’s not wholly illogical. The exposure to others is a constant threat, so be on constant defence. Or try opt out entirely, go off grid. But this doesn’t work either.

In fact, I recently got quite a good comment in response to an essay I wrote about symbols, desire and identity:

I think there is also a common loop where you recognize yourself slipping into a type and recognize it could be (must be!) the result of a bunch of empty posing, irony, marketing, etc, all the things you mentioned - so you think "ugh, this must not be really my true self", and reject that desire and look for something else, so you can make sure to not become "that guy", and then you keep doing that until you're spending your time on Saturday morning reading a long substack article about the end of desire and then commenting about it instead of doing literally anything else.

And you know what he’s fucking got me there. And himself.

Understanding society is pressuring you out of your ability to be yourself can be fun, but it’s somewhat masturbatory. And it’s not like you can go and self-actualise somewhere else. You aren’t above the process. You could even end up more alienated.

Such is the plight of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. Incredibly conscious, self-reflective, capable of penetrative insight, yet wholly incapable of connecting with anyone. Incapable of reaching any semblance of the potential he tells himself he has. Wasted his entire life away out of fear of doing, well, anything else.

No, this isn’t any better than The Waiter.

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Which takes me back to William James’ core questions:

1. What is the life I want?

2. How do I plan on getting it?

The previous section outlined that Q1 isn’t answered by looking inward, you’re more likely to copy someone else’s homework. This isn’t necessarily a problem, especially as some like Girard believe this to literally be your only option.

But it’s the answer to the second question that makes me want to set off an alarm. Because if the natural consequence of the presence of the Other for many is to hide, either within a role or from outside the system, then most people end up with no answer at all. They can value all the things society values, and picture themselves as ‘making it’ one day, but be too terrified to actually make a step towards it.

In other words, a desire to be outstanding, coupled with a fear of standing out.

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And this is about way more than ‘success’.

Let’s say there’s a young single guy at a bar, that cannot stop turning to look at a girl stood by herself while her friends have gone for a smoke. This girl’s not regular type beautiful. She’s drop to your knees, eye contact comes with a warning, makes you wanna thank ancient Gods type beautiful.

Conventional wisdom is ‘shoot your shot, you got nothing to lose’. He knows that, but he also knows he is going to do absolutely nothing. The thought of it makes him ill. Why? It is true he’s got nothing to lose, right?

Well, it is true that to an observer a rejection would be nothing lost. He’s back to where he was 30 seconds ago. So even with a crazy long shot it’s worth risking that for the potential of a life spent thanking Zeus.

But he’s not an observer, and he’s got a bigger threat at play. Because while he stands there imagining their life together, all secured by his bravery of approaching her on that fateful evening, he’s given himself a role. He is ‘the guy that could do that if he wanted to’. And who is the only person in the room that could reveal he’s not the guy he thinks he is? Who can he, thus, never ever approach in a million years? What is the only thing he can do?

And this is why narcissism, a preoccupation with identity and the image of who you are, is a scary thing to let happen to you.

I think this also explains burnt out gifted kid syndrome pretty well. You see communities online of people, now seemingly in their early twenties, who were told from very young that were destined for greatness. Now they can’t bring themselves to do anything, thanks to anxiety, exhaustion and disillusionment. (hey, if this sounds like you, what score did you get when you took that free self-test for ADHD?)

And it would seem that these people do hold being a gifted kid as a core part of their identity. I say that because they still say out loud that they were a gifted kid. With the implication being they still have that potential. But what would be the only way to actually test if they are special? What would be the best way of avoiding that getting tested?

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I’m sorry this essay has been so cynical and depressing. But on the back of those examples, I hope you at least find this resulting conclusion sort of funny:

If you spend your life focusing on identity, you don’t really get one. And if you spend all your energy on protecting your sense of self, then you don’t get one of those either.

And this is my answer to the problem of Section I. How individualism increases and decreases at the same time. But being pulled in opposite directions can cause a nasty tension, brother, and something’s gotta give. When stars go out they don’t just vanish, they become black holes. When ice melts it doesn't disappear, it becomes the flood.

And when people can’t act in a way that moves them towards the life they want, they take aim at those who can. If you want to be a philosopher about it you can call it ressentiment, but for the purposes of the rest of this we’re sticking with resentment.

And it is this modern resentment at the world that is where my actual fascination and fear lies. I see it a scary amount. How people talk about others when they’re not there. How people poke fun at anyone who does something different. Or anyone who makes a mistake. Or anyone who tries. Or anyone that doesn’t follow the rules. Every time I end up on twitter, reddit, youtube, and now even fucking substack notes, I can’t help but feel nauseated at how crazy and nasty people are to each other all the fucking time and still everyone just upvotes and doesn’t think this is the very force that will stop society from progressing. I’m pretty sure Nietzsche had a word for that kind of morality and it wasn’t ‘master’. Classic leopards in the temple, you might say.

The real question is how do you stop this from happening to yourself. We’ll get to that later, but first a description of what we mean.

Let’s say you are the person caught between the desire and eye of the other. The constant ability to display yourself to others gave you main character energy, but their constant gaze prevented you from every actually trying to make your dreams a reality. You are still where you started. You cannot act.

The problem is you wind up taking out your frustration on the people who do. The ones who show you action really is possible. They threaten your identity, and excuses for your circumstances, and narcissistic injuries absolutely demand a counter-punch.

If there’s one thing Ayn Rand was right about it was how many people secretly detest to see someone’s potential maximised. To look at the Mona Lisa and have it just serve as a reminder that greatness is possible, but it isn’t ever going to come from you. Defence mechanism engaged, before looking at an entrepreneur change the world and achieve the life of their dreams, and desperately clinging to any critique that helps suggest that they’re somehow less intelligent or virtuous than you are.

Hence, it’s very often the people who never built anything that have something to say about the people who do. And it’s no wonder that most audience ridicule comes from the back row, side row, never even tried row. And we just happen to have created the biggest arenas ever for these people to fill up.

But this was known long before comment sections or Reddit were even invented, though. Kierkegaard in 1843:

But the person who mocks other mocks themselves, and it is not meaningless but is rather a profound mockery of yourself, a tragic proof of how flabby your soul is.

And by the turn of the next century, we already started calling it projection.

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IV.

I contend that even though there’s multiple fonts it can be written in, modern day middle class resentment will always be produced by this one equation:

The desire (or expectation) to be something

multiplied by

The inability to do anything.

I mean, yeah, sure. You will do some things. Just so long as they’re not difficult, unusual, risky, or scary. And sure, that way you can guarantee you’ll never hurt anyone. Good for you. But my god, what is even the point of being alive? I mean that pretty seriously, given that a dead person could achieve that a hell of a lot easier.

Corpses don’t need anything, not even to breathe. Corpses don’t hurt anyone or anger people or fail or make mistakes or break rules. Corpses don’t have feelings, and therefore can’t possibly have feelings that are inappropriate or annoying. Once funeral arrangements have been made, corpses rot peacefully without burdening anyone.

Dead people goals often involve avoiding things, while alive people goals are more likely to involve achieving things. After all, often the easiest way to avoid a bad outcome is not to do anything—you can’t lose all your money gambling if you don’t step into a casino—and dead people are great at not doing things.

And a prime consequence of having no interest in gambling on life is that you instead give yourself no choice but to get dealt identity by microchip. Don’t actually believe in anything, just the devils you know. Give in to the Other. Play your role. Perhaps you know some of the lines already.

Think Dubai is tacky and commercial yet buy the wine with the coolest label on a Friday night. A vague sense that you’re supposed to dislike James Corden but can’t remember why. Obsess with celebrity but somehow think its weirder when divorced mothers do it on Facebook. Certain that it’s the elites that fuel classism while just happening to ‘not like the vibe’ of a certain set of pubs and clothing brands. Can’t help but comment “I love how into this you are” when you notice someone being sincere because you have no idea what that actually feels like. Had a ‘Brat Summer’ in which you did all the same things you would have done anyway. Have no problem insulting people online but get anxious ordering in a coffee-shop you haven’t been to before. Critiquing capitalism through 8 hours of screen time. Or is that just how you get the message out?

‘Louder for the people in the back!’

Don’t worry, we heard just fine.

Quelled your soul because you were too scared to do anything else. Found the level of despair you could just about tolerate and settled there. Angered by the trivial yet somehow totally indifferent to wasting your life away. Managed to write yourself as the victim in your own life story. 20+ years to obsess over your identity and this is still all you came up with.

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Listen, this might all be a little bit left field, but you’ve wound up a little bit resentful too, haven’t you? The things you talk/dream/post about. Your whole world is just a running list of everything that could be better - except you.

As in, you expect the world to change for you, and don’t even consider it possible that you could do something about it first. 

The insane thing about this (and I don’t use that term loosely) is that you think everyone else can’t see it. That it’s your little secret. If it ever got revealed, you’d probably kill yourself because you cant deal with a world where you don’t control your own narrative. 

Bad news for you man, people see it in you more than you can. Your conscious is good at keeping quiet but your unconscious tells on you all the time. And while you try to transmit superiority, fragility screams through like bad reception. I once heard TLP say that if you’re in a crowded park, and that guy who’s trying to scam people with a rigged game of ‘guess which cup has $10 under it’ approaches you and says ‘wanna play?’, you should just hand him the cash and consider it a good deal. Because what an insight. He picked YOU. And with that, he’s taught you more about yourself than the people you hang out with ever will. 

And *that* is the exact part that is diabolically insane: how much of your life is designed so you never have to confront that. Let me repeat. You never confront anything you do not want to hear about yourself. Ever. Consider the fact I had to draw you in with 6,000 words of postmodern French philosophy and social critique, with all the right contemporary coding and shared anecdotes, just so you thought this was all going to help you continue to feel like you ‘just get it more than everyone else does’. 

Consider that I can’t put this part at the end either, because people like to skip to the end of writing, scan the last two paragraphs, and then tell themselves they read the whole thing. And if they saw this bit first, they’d cognitively System 1 away from the situation before they even realised what happened. 

Such is the intricate stage direction you put in place before you even step outside to face the world. But this is a tragedy, not a drama, and I know the ending already. 

You’re waiting for the life you deserve. For people to recognise just how great you are. You’re waiting for it to deliver.

And just *there* you’ve given away the secret to this whole shoddy thing. You do think there’s something greater out there that’s watching you. That sees everything, and notices the role  you’re playing in it. And at some point, it's going to reward you for that. Until then, resentment at the world not rewarding you for existing it is. 

My point is this: go on believing in it. You can’t not believe in it, even if you tried. But stop believing you were born with a cosmic credit score, and that you’re gonna cash in at some point. Just consider that the respect from that other presence you believe in is something that you might actually have to earn. 

Then you’ll notice you’re a little less resentful than you used to be.

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V.

Saw another tweet recently:

Imagine if there were only 1 brand of peanut butter, 1 brand of pasta sauce, etc. Rather than spend your time in the grocery wondering "Which brand shall I buy?", you'd have the mindspace to wonder: "What person shall I become?"

I do hope that if I’ve have achieved anything with whatever the hell this thing is, then it’s convincing you of the fact that that is not a good way to look at the world. Not knowing who you want to become, and getting lost in the eye of the Other and the crazy amount of pasta sauces it provides, provides a comforting trap. The trap of telling yourself ‘if only everything could stop happening, if only the world would stop moving so fast - then I'd finally become who I'm meant to be’.

And it is the word meant that is doing all the harm there. Because the worst thing narcissism does to you is convince you that the self exists within you at all. That given all the right tools and resources, you can chip away at your soul through self-understanding, contemplation, endless therapy and just finding the right words to describe what’s going on in there. Just know that you might need to ask for a refund at the end of the trip. Because when the energy for evasion finally wears off, and you remove the cover from what you’ve been protecting, you’ll find there’s nothing left.

And that’s because the self is not something you understand, or find. It is something you create. That is your only option. And that guy complaining about peanut butter still managed not to take it.

Because here’s the truth. If there were one brand of peanut butter in the world, he would still have done nothing. If it was 25° and blue skies everyday he would have done nothing. If he had the perfect supportive partner he would have done nothing. If he lived in the perfect city he would have done nothing. If social media disappeared tomorrow he would have done nothing. Just like if he were born in the 1% he wouldn’t have done anything either.

And I can say all that with supreme confidence because he already had the greatest opportunity imaginable. The opportunity to exist. And he chose to do nothing.

And we can all tell how that story is going to end.

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So, how about yours? What’s the plan?

The biggest criticism I get is that classic ‘yeah nice work dude identifying a problem, but you actually haven’t suggested any solutions’, which I can’t pretend to deny a lot of the time.

But today I think the answer is pretty obvious: you need to change what you are afraid of.

Right now you're likely afraid of being seen. Of being judged. Of trying something and having it revealed that you're not who you've convinced yourself you are. You're afraid of the moment your potential becomes measurable. You're terrified of giving the Other anything real to look at, so you hide behind aesthetics and roles and telling yourself you're waiting for the right moment.

You're afraid of every single thing except the one thing that should actually scare you: reaching the end of your life and realising you never gave yourself permission to start it. So switch.

Fear becoming the person who watches others live while you write clever comments. Fear the moment you realise your cynicism was just cowardice with different branding. Fear dying with your rationalised comfort intact but your soul untested. Fear the half-lived life of indulged anxiety. Fear not following what keeps you up at night. Fear not trying. Fear it being too late.

Remember the Waiter and the Underground Man? They both encountered the presence of other people and responded by disappearing - the Waiter by dissolving into his role, the Underground Man by retreating from society entirely. They never truly engaged with the world again. They didn’t look the Other in the eye. And the result? Nobody could see them. Nobody could ever hear them call.

And so here’s the final cruel irony: the Other that paralysed you is also your only escape route. The gaze you've been hiding from is exactly what you need to step into. The eyes you fear are the ones that'll witness you becoming real.

Let your ideas come to life.

Just know that when you do, you won’t ever be the only one in the room.