What does it mean to live an unobserved life?
Oftentimes I find myself wishing that I could trade places with someone for a few moments just to witness myself from a different point of view. Not in a vanity type of way. Or in an attempt for validation. Rather from a place of curiosity. What is their perception of me from the outside looking in? How do the things I do, say, translate to another? What am I like? Who am I?
To answer these innate questions is probably why most people yearn to find a significant other. Someone to constantly watch. Observe. Notice. To do the work of telling us who we are.
There’s a rare gift in an unobserved life, especially in the age of social media. We can turn ourselves from the unobserved to observed in a matter of seconds. But in this process, some of the magic is lost. The magic that can’t be fully captured by oneself because most of the time it’s thought out, carefully curated, and published for the world to see.
No. The unobserved life’s magic lies within the knowledge that no one is appointed to watch. When a person is aware of this — of being purely unnoticed — then does the magic appear.
The magic? What is revealed about you when no one is watching.
If we had no social media — no option to broadcast our lives for friends, family, and strangers — what would we choose to spend our time on? How would we dress? What jobs would we pursue? What would we eat? What would we aspire to? What would we spend our energy on?
Until the observed life becomes unobserved, we cannot know this. Until we create time to be unobserved, we will be missing out on a critical aspect of self discovery. Of the discovery of oneself. Of our true self. Of the self that is revealed when there’s only you and you alone.
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