John articles

I have lost the desire to be seen. Not because I dislike people or because I suddenly became shy. If anything, I have simply grown curious about something else. I have spent enough time trying to be visible to realize that visibility is not always what it promises to be.

For a long time, I thought being seen was the goal. Isn’t that what we are taught in one way or another? Build a presence. Build an audience. Build a profile. Make yourself known. But known for what? That is the question I keep coming back to. Is it enough for people to recognize your face if they cannot recall your work? Is it enough to occupy someone’s attention for a moment if you leave nothing behind in their thoughts?

The older I get, the more I notice that some of the most influential people in my life were not people I constantly saw. In fact, I often heard of them long before I met them. Their reputation arrived before they did. Their work introduced them before they had the chance to introduce themselves. By the time I encountered them, the seeing almost felt secondary.

And that made me wonder: why have we become so obsessed with being visible? Why do we treat attention as if it is the final reward? Why do we spend so much time trying to enter people’s sight and so little time trying to remain in their memory? Are those really the same thing?

There was a time when I wanted my presence to do all the talking. These days, I would rather let my actions handle part of the conversation. Not because I have become mysterious, but because I have grown tired of explaining myself repeatedly. At some point, I started asking whether a person’s work should constantly need a spokesperson. Shouldn’t it be able to stand on its own?

Perhaps that is why I find more comfort in being heard of than being seen. Being seen often requires you to keep showing up and proving yourself all over again. Being heard of suggests that something you did continued travelling after you left. One depends on your presence. The other depends on your substance.

I am not disappearing. I am not withdrawing from the world. I am still here. I still have things to say. I still have work to do. But I no longer feel the same urgency to place myself at the centre of every room. What interests me now is a different question: if I were absent from the conversation, would my work still be present in it?

Maybe that is what changed. I stopped asking, “How many people saw me?” and started asking, “What did they carry away after the encounter?” Because attention is easy to measure, but significance is not. One can be counted. The other has to be felt.

So no, I do not crave visibility the way I once did. I prefer something quieter. I prefer to be heard of. Heard about. Heard through the things I have built, written, contributed, and left in motion. Not because being seen has no value, but because I have discovered that not everything important needs an audience in order to matter.