Narrator vs. Hero

I am not the omniscient narrator of society.

Lately I have felt a strong temptation to distance myself from what’s happening around me. I want to look at the world and pretend I’m reading a novel or watching a television show - that I’m watching from the sidelines, enjoying it like I would a good story.

To be an observer rather than a player can be necessary to manage too-heavy emotions or situations - to remove myself, to recognize that there is more than just the anger, or sadness, or fear, or whatever I am trapped in at the present moment.

But what if I live this way consistently in the world of others? What if I see myself as the omniscient narrator of the larger world, removed from it, above and better than what’s around me? What if I convince myself that none of what happens has anything to do with me?

This temptation is great, especially when I am called upon to process something that I don’t know how to process. It makes me feel good, like I know something that other people don't, that I’m not as confused and rattled as the people I see on the news.

Isn’t it crazy how fucked up the world is? People suck. Why can’t they just be nice to each other?

Does that person know what they look like? I bet they don’t know how ridiculous they are. I feel sad for them. Thank god I’m not like that.

I know something they don’t. I’m not stuck in the dark, like them.

If I see myself as the omniscient narrator of planet Earth, I’m looking down on a cast of characters, standing apart from them. I know that only I have the truth, that I understand things better than everyone around me. I’m the only one who can see the truth, and anything contrary to what I perceive must be wrong.

I think this started as a defense against not feeling like I wasn’t good enough to participate in the story. As a little kid, I was constantly rejected from groups, and I could never figure out why people didn’t like me.

I had an ever-present feeling that I wasn’t doing something right, so I assumed that everyone knew a secret that I didn’t, and if I learned this secret, I could do it right, whatever it was.

I still feel like the kid that no one wants to play with. Everyone is giggling behind their hands at me. I’m trying to please them, to say the right thing, but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and they won’t tell me the secret, and they are still laughing, but this time with their backs turned, walking away.

As an adult, I have many groups to which I belong. But sometimes, the temptation grows to see the groups I can’t be a part of (kids who won’t play with me) and think:

I’m better than this. I’m outside of your small little world. I never wanted to play in the first place.

I hate being human sometimes - ugly and wretched and wrong -but part of growing up has been learning that that person that I hate is also me. There’s no rising above. There’s only dealing with what I am. And what I am is a person living in the world of people. All the ugliness that I see and despise in the world is in me.

I know now that this kind of “self-awareness” is just another ego trip. There are no sidelines, there’s no space to hover above. We’re all in the picture. We’re just doing different things.

I don’t want to be the narrator anymore. I want to be the hero of my story. I want to be in the story.

We are heroes in a story of millions of heroes. There’s no narrator.

I am everybody - the ugly and the luminous. I’m included.

And I want to play.