Who Am I to Tell?

I have been thinking lately,
Do we need to be exceptional to have something worth saying?

The question comes to me especially when I think about writing, sharing ideas, or speaking about something I have experienced.

We see so many stories of people who have achieved something extraordinary, built successful companies, overcome incredible adversity, failed spectacularly and bounced back, transformed their lives completely, or become experts in something after years of dedication. Their stories are everywhere, and very interesting too. We read their books, watch their interviews, follow them on social media, listen to their podcasts, and we imagine that there must be something special about people who have such stories to tell.

I understand why we are drawn to them. A spectacular success makes a good story. So does a spectacular failure followed by an equally spectacular comeback. A dramatic transformation gives us something to admire, learn from, or aspire to.

But sometimes I wonder about the rest of us.

What about the people who are neither extraordinarily successful nor spectacularly unsuccessful? What about those of us who live somewhere in between, trying to make sense of things as we go along?

Most of us are not building companies that change the world, winning awards for extraordinary achievements, or overcoming obstacles that make headlines. We are working, raising families, taking care of parents, worrying about money, trying to stay healthy, making mistakes, learning things, changing our minds, putting things off, starting again, trying to improve ourselves and our surroundings through tiny steps, and occasionally wondering whether we should be doing something more with our lives.

We have dreams, but we do not always act on them. We have ideas, but sometimes they remain ideas for years. We take risks, but not always the big ones. We are afraid of falling, and we are also afraid of growing too much because growth brings its own uncertainty.

We try to maintain some balance, even while occasionally dreaming of throwing everything up in the air and doing something completely different. Then we return to our ordinary lives.

This is where most of us actually live, somewhere in between.

The world we see through social media and popular culture has made these extremes even more visible. We constantly see people who have “made it,” reinvented themselves, left everything behind, failed and returned stronger, or discovered their purpose and built an extraordinary life around it.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, and I find many of these stories inspiring myself. But when we see enough of them, something interesting can happen.

We may start comparing our ordinary lives with somebody else’s extraordinary story. We begin to feel that if we have not achieved something remarkable, we have nothing much worth saying.

I have always had the urge to write, and I hope it helps someone else too. I know that I usually feel better after writing. But I have also caught myself thinking about these things when I write.

Who am I to tell?
Am I an expert?
Have I achieved enough?
Have I failed spectacularly enough to have a story about resilience?
Have I reached some great destination from which I can look back and tell others what they should do?

The honest answer is no. I am still figuring things out. I have things I have postponed, things I have tried and abandoned, things I still want to do, things I am afraid to try, and dreams that sometimes feel very real and sometimes disappear into the background of everyday life.

There are things I have learned through experience, but I am still learning. There are a few things I understand today that I did not understand ten years ago, and there are probably things I believe today that I will see differently ten years from now.

So who am I to tell someone else how to live? Perhaps I am not. And maybe that is not what writing has to be. I do not need to tell anyone what they should do. Maybe I can simply share what I have noticed.

I can write about something that happened to me, something I struggled with, something I understood differently with time, or even something I am still trying to understand.

I can say, here is what I experienced, rather than “this is what you should do.” There is a difference.

We do not always need to have reached the destination to talk about the road. Sometimes we can share what we noticed while walking along it. I think about this when I look at my own life.

I have had a long career, but I would not describe myself as someone who has achieved everything I once imagined I would. I have changed directions, learned new things, taken on responsibilities, had moments when I felt confident, and other moments when I questioned myself.

I have had ambitions that stayed with me for years and others that quietly disappeared. I have started things and not finished them. I thought about writing for a long time before actually doing it.

I have had ideas that excited me and then allowed them to sit quietly as life got busier. I have taken some chances and avoided others. None of this is particularly dramatic.

It is simply my life.

It makes me think that there must be value in talking about these in-between lives. Because the world is full of us.

People who are not famous but have experienced something, who are not experts but have learned something, and who may not have achieved greatness but have still lived long enough to have a few thoughts worth sharing. We fall, but not always spectacularly. We succeed, but not extraordinarily. Most of us are simply still trying.

Most of us are sometimes brave and sometimes scared. We dream about doing something bigger and then decide that today is not the day. We try again later, and sometimes stop dreaming altogether, only to unexpectedly begin dreaming again.

There is something comforting about knowing we do not have to fit neatly into the stories that are most often celebrated. We do not have to become extraordinary to make our lives meaningful.

An ordinary life does not mean an unimportant life. There are countless quiet acts of courage happening every day that nobody will write books about. Someone starts again after a difficult year or learns something new at an age when they thought they were too old to begin. Someone stays in a difficult situation because other people depend on them, while someone else leaves when they finally understand that staying is no longer right.

Many people are taking care of parents, raising children while still trying to figure out their own lives, starting something they have thought about for years, or simply deciding to take better care of themselves. And sometimes, courage is as ordinary as making the phone call we have been avoiding or simply getting up the next morning and continuing.

None of them may look extraordinary from the outside. They don’t need to.

We have become too accustomed to listening only to the loudest voices, the biggest achievements and the most dramatic stories, and perhaps we have forgotten how much wisdom exists in quieter lives.

Every person sees the world through a slightly different window. Two people can go through something similar and come away with completely different thoughts, memories and lessons because their histories, personalities, relationships and circumstances are different.

That difference is not a weakness. It is what makes the world interesting. If everyone had the same experiences, reached the same conclusions and lived according to the same formula, the world would probably be easier to understand, but it would also be much less interesting.

Maybe that is why I continue to write. Not because I have figured everything out, consider myself an expert, or have achieved some extraordinary level of success that gives me the authority to tell others how to live.

I write because I notice things, think about them, and sometimes wonder about them for a long time. Sometimes an ordinary experience stays with me and makes me look at something differently. Sometimes, what I have noticed might resonate with someone else who is going through something similar. That is enough reason for me to write.

I still have that little voice asking, “Who am I to tell?”

Maybe the answer is that I am simply one person among many, trying to understand life while living it. And maybe you are too. We do not need everyone to listen. If something we have experienced, noticed, or wondered about makes even one person pause for a moment and think about their own life differently, it is already worth sharing.

We do not have to be extraordinary to have something to say. We just have to be willing to notice, to reflect, and sometimes to speak from where we are. And perhaps there is something worth hearing in the lives lived quietly in between the extremes.

–Anitha KC