Last night I was lying in bed scrolling my phone, and I stumbled on an article about someone born in the late nineties who'd just landed on some prestigious ranking. Raised a few million dollars, built something praised as "reinventing a whole industry." In the photo they stood on a stage, lights blazing, a sea of people clapping below.
I ached. Honestly, I did. The feeling came fast, a small sting somewhere in my chest, maybe three seconds long.
Then I put the phone down, reached for the bowl of soup still warm on my desk, and took a sip. Hot, a little salty, just right. And the sting somehow dissolved. All that stayed was a question, light but stubborn: what if I never do anything big with my whole life?
The disease of thinking you're the main character
I think most of us grow up with a belief installed early, so quietly that no one notices it's there.
Movies are about the chosen ones. Fairy tales are about kids who seem ordinary but turn out to carry some heaven-sent destiny. Every good story has a special protagonist, and we — the children watching — quietly believe we're one too. That we were born to do something big. To shine. To make the world remember our name.
People call it main character syndrome. It sounds grand, but living with it is exhausting.
Because once you believe you must be extraordinary, every ordinary thing you do becomes not enough. Finishing a kind task no one notices: not enough. Having a stable job that sounds a little dull: not enough. Living a steady life, work in the morning, cooking at night: it feels like failing. As if society is quietly grading you, and the scale has a single mark, way up high: stand out, or be nothing at all.
I strained toward that mark for a while. And I got tired. The tired of a person who always feels behind, lacking, not-yet-worthy — even though no one was actually demanding it of me but myself.
This world runs on ordinary people
Another evening, I sat thinking it over, and one very plain idea made my whole body lighter.
This world doesn't run smoothly because of a few great names on rankings. It runs because of billions of ordinary people quietly doing their small jobs well, every day.
The bus was on time this morning because some driver no one can name woke at four. The bowl of phở I ate was good because someone simmered the broth all night. The app I opened ran smoothly because somewhere a developer fixed a bug that no article will ever mention. None of them "reinvented an industry." But pull a single one out, and a quiet slice of life collapses.
The whole world looks up at the sun. But the person who finds their way home at night does it by a streetlamp nobody notices.
When I look at it that way, everything I do carries a different weight. Designing a clean interface so someone is less confused using it. Fixing a bug so things run smoothly. Being kind to the person beside me. Supporting myself without holding out my hand to anyone. Those things, it turns out, aren't small. They're just not loud.
It's okay to be a streetlamp
So I stopped forcing myself to burn.
I let myself love the small things I've always loved: finishing an ordinary task and exhaling, eating a bowl of noodles with a fried egg when I'm hungry, rewatching an old film for the fifth time. There's no wild ambition in any of it. And I've decided that's fine. More than fine.
If my life can't blaze like a sun, then I'll be a quiet streetlamp. Standing in one corner, glowing just enough for a few passersby to see the road. No applause, no photos. But on the exact night someone needs it, I'm still there, still lit.
I'm not writing this to talk you out of your dreams. If you want to be the sun, go burn with everything you have — I love that for you. I just want to say this to anyone who, like me, sometimes feels small under someone else's glare of glory: you don't have to be great before you're allowed to feel at peace.
A "dull" life where you sleep without nightmares, eat with appetite, and carry no gnawing in your chest — that isn't losing. It's the very thing a lot of people strain their whole lives to trade for.
Anyway, the soup's gone cold. I'm off to reheat it.