On Feeling Insignificant

It's possible I'm not that cool

Photo by Daniel K Cheung on Unsplash

The other day I was watching a music video of some 20-somethings. Jack Harlow, I think, singing Vanilla Baby. I felt a weird twinge of envy as I watched, and was promptly so embarrassed by that feeling that I practically reeled back in horror.

WHY? I wondered. What am I envious of? Do I want to be in a music video? Is there some part of me that wants fame and hasn't admitted it?

In the shower, where I do a significant portion of my thinking, I realized no part of me truly desires to be in a music video. My envy was based on the fact that, even if this guy turns out to be a one-hit wonder, his art has made an impact on the world in some small way. It will still live on for a long time, well past the song's prime. People will have memories attached to this song that will follow them for the rest of their lives. That's what I truly desire... some version of immortality, of having made your mark on culture, fleeting though it may be.

Some version of significance.

I’ve been struggling with insignificance lately, and its close cousins mediocrity and averageness. A snub from a colleague here, an opportunity lost there, plus a real reckoning about relationships and which ones I want to be in. I’m in the middle of a long transition between careers and lifestyles and it feels like there’s very little place for excellence. It’s all necessary but lonely, and it leaves me feeling small.

A couple of months ago, I was talking over coffee with a friend when she told me she was not where she thought we would be at this age, in her late 30s. She had so many hopes and dreams as a young girl, and she was so excited about what she was going to do in the future. Her life didn't really match up with those hopes and dreams, and as a mom of two kids and a business owner, she didn't feel that excitement any longer.

It didn't dawn on me until later that she does live an extraordinary life of service. She serves on more boards—in an earnest way, not in a resume-building way—than anyone else I know. She's community-minded and always checking on her people. Years ago, she got abruptly laid off from a job and hit the ground running within weeks, building a business that helped support her and her family within a year. But to her, it felt off. Not quite right.

Where do these feelings of insignificance or smallness come from? I think it can only come from comparison. There is no "average" without the other inputs. You're either thinking you're mediocre in comparison to what everyone else is doing; mediocre in comparison to what someone else expected you to be doing; or mediocre in comparison to what you think you should have done or achieved by this point. 

If I compare my life to my colleagues and fellow entrepreneurs, I'm laughably behind. I’m in the position of having a lot of very successful friends, and it’s difficult not to compare. I'm not sure whether I'm measuring up to my family's expectations. I think they all accepted that I was going to be on my own trajectory a long time ago, and they're all kind enough (thank god) not to say things like "I thought you'd be [fill in the blank] by now."

The worst is the comparison to where you thought you’d be. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a diplomat, to work internationally, probably for the government or some other international organization. I wanted to be some version of Amal Clooney, the gorgeous British Barrister with challenging and high-level cases and a foundation, as well as her advocacy work. I've done nothing of the sort. Compared to my dreams and expectations, I'm "failing." That might be the worst sting of all, even though I’m not convinced that’s the life I want now, not by a long shot.

For those of us who are Americans, we have it drummed into us from an early age that we could be something special, that we’re meant for something more. Our media reinforces this, and our stories all feature the wayward hero who pulls it off all by themselves. “Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars,” says Norman Vincent Peale. It’s a comforting thought, but if we end up closer to ordinary, we feel like we’ve failed. What if we land in Fresno? Or Iowa?

“There’s a painful divergence between our hopes for ourselves and the reality of our lives,” philosopher Alain de Botton says in his TED Talk on success. “You cannot be successful at everything. So, any vision of success has to admit what it’s losing out to. A lot of the time, our ideas about what it means to live successfully are not our own, they are formed by our parents and society.”

Why do we feel so driven to reach so far? To achieve? Well, significance might also be equated with a sense of immortality, of having the ability to live beyond your years, or at least not be forgotten when you leave this world. Significance helps us overcome our mortality—or more specifically, our fear of death. Writer Chuck Palahniuk nails it when he says, “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” So, we try to create something that will leave a legacy.

Which brings me full circle back to Jack Harlow and Vanilla Baby. Whatever happens, he’s at least made his mark… which causes me to rethink about how I make my mark.

Maybe my standards of success need to be reevaluated, sure. And maybe I also need to think about the ways I do have an impact. This newsletter has a small number of subscribers by any reasonable standard, and yet my open rate is 50%. That tells me people actually read what I write. That’s gratifying. It means there’s something here for someone other than myself. Even more gratifying are the emails I get when something strikes home for someone I care about. It means it’s not a one-way conversation, I’m not yelling into the void. In some small way, what I’ve written has helped someone else. In the end, maybe leaving a mark is less about a hit song or high-profile career, and more about touching the lives around us and being true to ourselves.