Overcoming Insignificance When No One Knows Your Name

“Unfortunately, our home is a total loss,” said my former college professor when posting a picture of what used to be his house in Altadena.

I texted a friend from my 12-step program and asked him about the Community United Methodist Church in the Palisades, which was a cornerstone of the LA recovery community.

“It burned down,” he replied matter-of-factly. Places I drove by on the way to Surfrider Beach in Malibu were reduced to charred signs with half of the writing still visible, and I just sat there in horror, watching the fire line on a Google map spread out like a wine stain.

We all thought it would be an earthquake, so while construction crews were retrofitting buildings, we did nothing about the brush.

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I came to LA in 1998 to attend college and never left until recently. I planned to make it in music — to be famous and live like a celebrity, but life had other plans. When Covid hit, I was laid off from my tech job, pursued life coaching, and returned to tech as a fully remote worker. I felt that LA was in decline, so I left.

I left large groups of friends, acquaintances, meetings, surf breaks, and good and bad memories. I lived what felt like multiple lifetimes in LA. In many ways, I grew up there, and for most of my time there, I didn’t have a reason to leave.

I surfed regularly and was an active member in what’s commonly considered one of the best recovery communities in the world.

After Covid, however, I felt like LA was on the wrong path. Rents and gas prices skyrocketed, and people seemed less and less friendly. I felt like anyone who didn’t know me never made eye contact or looked at me like I was making them late. “Get the fuck out of my way,” I felt like everyone was telling me, and I stopped feeling at home.

A gym buddy I talked to frequently about relationships told me he and I are invisible to the women of LA. While I didn’t completely buy that, I couldn’t help but feel he was right. After he said that, I think I walked over to a mirror, lifted my shirt, and checked if I still had a six-pack.

I was a member of Gold’s Gym in Venice, where A-list celebrities and nobodies like myself shared weights.

About two years later, I fell in love with snowboarding and the mountains and moved to the Sierras. Coincidentally, the NorCal and Sierra Nevada ranges are no strangers to forest fires, many of which have caused evacuations and widespread devastation. However, this didn’t deter me.

How is it that I moved to a fire-prone area, and shortly afterward, the worst fire in LA history broke out? The question, nor the answer, is of any importance, but when survivor’s guilt kicks in, you ask yourself these things.

In 2018, one of my best friends died of a drug overdose, and all I could think was, “Why didn’t I do more? Why didn’t I check in on him? Why couldn’t I save him?” Why, why, why.

When a crisis hits close to home, our thinking changes.

Suddenly, the blur of social media comparisons and beating rush hour traffic gives way to a sharpened sense of purpose. Feeling invisible gives way to gratitude and a desire to rise to the occasion.

Suddenly, we become altruists, gathering clothes to donate and filling out billing details for online donations. For a brief time, we come together in a flash of higher-order humanity.

Some, however, ask how they can help themselves. I heard of real estate developers looking to cash in, gas stations jacking up gas prices, scammers siphoning donations, looters, and those looking to cash in on the sudden housing crunch.

Natural disasters bring out the best in most and the worst in some, but they also prove that most people are good. Musicians hold fundraising disaster relief concerts, and companies like Disney donate millions.

Suddenly, large corporations have the opportunity to change our negative opinions about them, and I’m okay with that.

Like Covid, people share in the same slap in the face that nature provides and remind us that we’re all vulnerable. We’re all in this together. We can live in a mobile home or a mansion in the hills, and both will go up like a book of matches under the right circumstances.

Perhaps that’s what brings people together in times like these. Sure, those with money can afford another house or a fancy apartment by the beach, but scrapbooks, photo albums, clothes, antiques, and the guitar your grandfather gave you are all the same type of flammable.

Money can replace a house, but it can’t replace the fact that you raised your kids there, and that nostalgic place is gone.

…

When times are good, however, I can sit for hours calculating the cost of getting the house I want in a “safe” neighborhood. I can meet with realtors and lenders and rub my hands together at the thought of how many people will be impressed with my new possession.

I’m back to my LA way of thinking. I’m back to feeling that whatever I have at any given moment isn’t enough. I’m secretly feeling invisible.

I saw a picture of a multi-million dollar house blasted with fire retardant on a hill in LA. Under all that red dust, it looked worthless. It was just painted with dust as if it were an abandoned shack. Who knows its value now, even if it didn’t burn.

Meanwhile, homes that cost who-knows-what became just another black spot on a giant map of black spots in a news chopper’s video. The point is, I think if I could get that house or that thing, I’d be safe. I could finally prove that I made it.

My thinking is flawed because I believe that what I have makes me. What I possess at any given time attracts people to me like a magnet.

Against the backdrop of all that “Hollywood,” it’s easy to feel insignificant. But feelings change when you’re handing out clothes to someone who lost them all or having the ability to let someone stay at your place while they figure out their life.

Humanity can achieve great things together, but we’re easily lost. When we have nothing to fight for or against, we think about ourselves and what we can gain. We scroll on social media and fall into a comparison trap so deep that we must spend our way out of it, only to feel “less than” a day later.

Hamsters on a digital wheel, looking at people thinking, “Get the fuck out of my way.” I’ve said that to people who couldn’t hear me as I fought through traffic.

In times like these, though, we can achieve what I believe is the highest position anyone can attain: being in a position to help.

When times are good, our enemy is within. We need more likes. We need to be somewhere. We need to be someone.

We need to feel significant.

We don’t have to try to be somebody because we already are, but what we do, not what we have, defines us. Firefighters, who I wouldn’t give a second thought to — except when they made me stop along the side of the road as they passed by loudly — are now heroes.

Canada, Mexico, Nevada, LA — wherever they came from, they are heroes.

But we can be heroes, as Bowie said. I’m not saying we must fight fires or live like Mother Theresa. I’m saying that perhaps we all can achieve significance by being of service as often as possible.

I used to think that I needed to be viewed as significant to as many people as possible while pissing on the ones who already treated me as such.

Ironically, I now realize that I wanted to be in a position to help. I wanted as many people as possible to ask for a favor from me. I wanted to feel needed, in control, powerful. Safe.

The truth is, I don’t need to wait that long to feel that because the more time I spend thinking about others instead of myself, the more visible I feel.

Tomorrow, I might go back to obsessing about what kind of house I can afford, but today, I’m texting my mom and telling her where to find a pile of clothes to donate. I’m filling out billing details on donation forms and being grateful I can help.

Today, I don’t feel as insignificant.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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