THE FEAR OF BEING NOTICED

Little kids love attention. They love showing off their latest scribbles, favorite toys, and budding skills. Some kids at least. Others look for a good corner to hide in. If you are a highly introverted, highly neurotic personality type, you have been in that symbolic corner. If you’re not, you might have seen one of those weird, shy kids observing you from the shadows. It might have been me. I hated being noticed, and I hated anything resembling showing off. Being asked to recall something from my homework was an embarrassment. Having my measurements taken was insufferable.

Sometimes, avoiding notice is a rational and deliberate strategy for interacting with the world. I call it information mercantilism. You take in all the available information about the happenings and people around you without giving away information about yourself. It’s the same strategy you use in a game of poker. Am I claiming that some little kids justify their fear by calling it a strategy? I certainly did. At a very young age, I heard a quote from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” That quote stuck with me as a justification for shyness.

Most of the time, however, avoiding notice is a reaction to an irrational fear. It’s hard to rationally explain irrational things, but you might relate to an example. Mom put my brother and me in taekwondo. I hated every second of it. I felt so exposed. Mediocrity became my goal; that way the instructor would neither compliment me nor scold me. I tried to position myself toward the middle of the group to blend into the crowd. I wasn’t afraid—I was strategic, or so I thought.

Strategy justified my irrational fear, and bad experiences justified my strategy. People assume a lot based on a child’s age, gender, and appearance. Parents assume that other people’s children have preferences and motivations similar to those of their own kids. When a child speaks, adults assume that they understand everything going on in that young mind. I’m convinced that these assumptions usually miss the mark. In my young mind, they always missed the mark, so I didn’t want to give strangers anything to base an assumption on. There is a human need to be known, but surely it’s better to be unknown than misknown. That drove me to be hyperconscious of people’s perceptions and terrified of the spotlight. I only wanted to be seen by those who would take care to see properly and only wanted to reveal what they would interpret accurately.

Change starts with a mission. Encouraging friends is a good thing; teaching younger siblings and relatives is a great thing, but these are things you ought to do for everyone. If you claim to love God, and I did, you have to love others as the Bible commands. Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10 read, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” No other fear matters if you fear God. If you are making a positive impact, then who cares what a random onlooker thinks? If you are obeying God’s commands, then what is embarrassment or insult? Nothing. Embracing that perspective, though, is the journey of a lifetime.

I started to take initiative. If I noticed another child left out of the group, I would plan out a conversation, create a persona to overcome my shyness, and then go talk to my fellow outcast. It was a good thing. If I heard something that I knew was false, I would plan out a conversation, hope that the opportunity would pass, and then stand up for the truth. It was a great thing despite the weak knees, shaking hands, sweat, and mild dizziness that came with it.

My persona had problems, though. It was doing its job, helping me engage people, but I felt like I couldn’t be myself. By persona, I mean a pattern of thought and behavior adapted for a specific situation. Almost everyone has a workplace persona for interacting with customers or coworkers. It is when your persona becomes deceptive that it becomes a problem. When you start to notice your own fake smiles and laughs, it’s time for your persona to change. You have to throw out everything that doesn’t represent your principles and replace it with more of yourself. You might have to open up a bit more, but that’s good: you discover that you’re not as vulnerable as you thought.

Even after adjusting my persona, my irrational fear of being noticed was still strong. I still kept to the woods when I went outside to avoid being seen by neighbors or passersby. I still couldn’t wear anything that might draw attention, even if I really liked it. I still couldn’t have written this essay. The words of another ancient philosopher have stuck with me. In his collected writings, Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “If you are grieved about anything external, ’tis not the thing itself that afflicts you, but your judgment about it; and it is in your power to correct this judgment and get quit of it.” There is only one way to correct false judgments: you have to put yourself face to face with reality. You have to face your fear. I had to put myself in situations where I would be noticed—perhaps a hundred such situations—to pull my overblown judgment down to reality.

You can master your fear. Nothing should be able to stop you from doing what you believe is right, and nothing should be able to compel you to do something you believe is wrong. Each time you face a fear, the physiological response gradually weakens until you can push past the weak knees, shaking hands, etc. You’re not suppressing your personality—you’re not the sum of your fears—you are throwing off the lies that have been suppressing who you were made to be.

I’m still not outgoing, but I can be when I need to be. Sun Tzu’s principle, applied properly, is still part of how I interact with the world. I avoid unnecessary attention, but, at long last, I can rock my purple fedora. It has been a long journey and a good journey; all the best journeys start with the fear of the Lord.