It took me half a lifetime to learn that I would live and die in obscurity. That's not a bad condition to live and die with - and I have no secret identity to fall back on like Clark Kent. There is only one unique me here at the keyboard.
I pause and collect my thoughts.
I had once hoped to become a guiding spirit of this little universe, which is our anthill, but it was not granted to me to become this kind of tutelary genius, in the Roman sense...
Only a vision of the cosmos in all its dimensions and manifolds convinced me I was obscure. I had ambition for myself. This kind of ambition can be regarded as a kind of alienation from the present moment. But freedom is found in not being known, and in fewer nods..
Thoreau wrote:
"Fame does not tempt the bard
who is famous with his god."
In the same way I had to come to recognize Jesus, not myself, as "Lord of the universe and the sparrow." (also Thoreau) This freed me from the burden of the eons, and made me eat humble pie.
My mother used to say, "I'm the most ordinary person in the world." Ditto - would that I was superlative in meekness and humility. I loathe celebrity. It is iron shackles. Now I can walk around free as a bird in flight, while before I always had to be on my best behavior.
I think many of us go thru this kind of conflict sometime in our lives, and our vanity is appeased by token victories. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre wrote of "The Desire to be God." What a flawed God I and most of us would make...
Rejoice with me in my freedom!
We are atoms of freedom made in the loving image of deity. Man is freedom, but we see him everywhere in chains. The only way to break the shackles off is to stop insisting on being Number One.
The world will remain tranquil when I die.
Happy Christmas!