On why we confuse visibility with worth

There was a time when being ordinary was not a crime. People lived, worked, raised families, planted mango trees, and went to bed with a full stomach and a tired smile. Nobody asked them for a LinkedIn update or whether their evening walk was “Instagram-worthy.”

But today, the fear of being ordinary hangs over us like a Wi-Fi signal—unseen, but dictating everything we do. We post our meals, our milestones, our meditations. We curate ourselves like start-ups pitching for venture capital. And quietly, beneath all this performance, lurks the whisper: Am I visible enough? Am I special enough? Will the world notice me if I simply live?

I am guilty too. There are moments when I look at my own life and wonder if it measures up against some invisible scoreboard. Did I travel enough? Did I write enough? Did I collect enough badges of “extraordinary”? And then, in quieter hours, I remind myself: the mango tree my grandfather planted is still giving fruit, long after his name has faded from conversation. He was ordinary, yet his ordinariness was profoundly alive.

The trouble is, we mistake visibility for worth. The world applauds what it can see—likes, followers, flashy resumes. But the human heart knows better. Ordinary kindness, ordinary consistency, ordinary patience—these are the forces that hold families, societies, even civilizations together.

Perhaps the real fear is not of being ordinary but of being forgotten. Yet obscurity is not failure. A star does not need applause to shine; it simply burns because that is its nature.

So maybe the antidote is this: instead of asking, How can I stand out? we could ask, How can I stand true? In that question, the weight of ordinariness disappears. And suddenly, you realize—you were never ordinary to begin with.

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Letters for the Inner Journey by Pushkar

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