some anonymous thoughts about anonymity

character is always said to be what you do when no one’s watching. I think those moments are more and more uncommon for our modern society. we live in a culture that frames every opportunity as watchable and post-able.

so what does it look like to seek the ‘no one’s watching’ moments?
margin…

do we know how to spend time with ourselves anymore?
time…
to increase the space between stimulus and response – to decrease the number of stimuli and lower the need for response,
to take inventory of ourselves and all our ‘departments’ – head, heart, soul, body, etc,
to know our true values, desires, longings, and contributions to the world,
to create,
to heal,
to pause.

with time commonly considered the most rate-limiting resource in our modern age, it is also the ultimate playing-field-leveler. success – however you may define it – depends on how you spend your time. I have found my energy management, creativity, clarity, and authenticity, among other things to be directly correlated to the amount of time I spend alone. but it was a learned skill. alone time used to scare me – perhaps enough social energy or PTSD from childhood timeout to lean me towards avoidance. but now I find that time precious and key to keeping my head on straight, my heart beating in good rhythm, and my passions aligned with purpose.

the awareness scale of external stimuli vs internal stimuli has tipped quickly out of balance. if your internal inputs are not stronger than your external inputs, you’ll be swept away. you have to tune and calibrate the internal compass.

what if spaces of anonymity and obscurity are not bad, but in fact required to step into true authenticity?