There are many who don’t entirely own a life. They live in the margins of other people’s lives, grey people unnoticed in the shadows. The place they inhabit is so far out, the light can not reach it, so there is no danger it will ever shine on them. Always present, but never really seen, passed by with barely a glance. No one cares what they say, so no one listens, voices unheard and unrecognised. Others talk over them, around them and at them but never to them
They get by on the crumbs left over from other more interesting lives, living vicariously off the dim radiation of the ‘special people’. The young and loud, the beautiful confident people dancing in the light. The popular people who are the centre of the universe, and who crave to be in the spotlight. In times of trouble or desertion the ‘special people’ will turn to the 'grey people', because they offer sympathy and comfort without the expectation that it will ever be returned. Once the crisis is over they sink back into obscurity, and once out of sight again, will never be a reminder of bad times now wished to be forgotten.
Edith Wharton wrote” There are two ways of spreading light, to be the candle or to be the mirror that receives it”. Living in someone else’s reflected light, never being the one to shine, becomes a way of life, it can feel safe and anonymous, if no one ever looks at them, they can’t make a fool of themselves.
Living a borrowed life means never having an opinion worth listening to, and never setting a trend worth following. So if you are a fringe dweller don’t be content to wait and see what everyone else thinks. If you want to be interesting be different, have the courage not to copy, learn to live your own life, William Henry said “Fools regret their words; wise men regret their silences”. If people don’t hear your thoughts how can they know if you have anything interesting to say, how can they notice you, and how can they ever know the real beauty within you. Who knows you may turn out to be fabulous and fascinating and when the spotlight comes around, suddenly it will be you who is shining.
“Most people are other people; their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation”. Oscar Wilde
Title quote by William Wallace