What Do You Do When the World Doesn’t See You?

The people who love me are an ocean away. Do they think about me as often as I think about them?

In Vietnam, I’m surrounded by faces, but no one truly sees me. I’m the invisible man.

I make eye contact with the waiter and smile. She walks toward me, and I wave her off before she asks if I want another coffee or the check. That’s what she’s used to. But I don’t need another drink. I need a piece of human connection.

I chose this: the sabbatical, the country, this life. I’m out of my comfort zone, and it’s uncomfortable in ways I wasn’t ready for. Not because of the food, the language, or how risky it feels to cross the street here.

But because it’s forcing me to confront something I don’t want to face: my need to feel seen.

I want what you want. What we all want.

To be noticed. To matter.

We all light up when someone truly sees us. A text from that special person. A terrible meme from a friend that still robs you of a smile. A voice message from your mom asking, “How did the doctor’s appointment go? “. The kind of small gestures you didn’t realize you needed.

Like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, I’ve built my own Wilsons to keep me grounded.

The waiter at the restaurant where I eat every day. The people in my CrossFit class. Familiar faces that fill the void are the pacifier for the loneliness I forgot to pack.

If I disappeared tomorrow, they wouldn’t notice. But the more they see me, the more I become real to them. Not just another passing tourist, but a person. That’s what I’ve always loved about staying somewhere long enough to become a “local.”

When the waiter knows your name, notices when you are not there for long, and asks if you want the usual, it’s a unique sense of belonging. It’s the closest most of us will ever get to the good part of fame: being seen, recognized, remembered, but without the scrutiny or the pressure.

My new acquaintances are placeholders. Mannequins keeping the chair of my social life warm. They see me, but they don’t know me.

It reminds me of someone I saw years ago. A security guard, sitting alone in a hotel hallway. His job was to exist, to fill a chair. A scarecrow made of meat.

I wondered about his life. What filled his thoughts during those endless hours? But he was in a trance.

The Schrödinger guard, both dead and alive.

Every time I passed, I smiled and said hi. I wanted him to know that I saw him. Maybe, just maybe, that tiny interaction could pierce the stillness and remind him he was human.

We know nothing about others' internal world. A smile costs me nothing, and it can keep the guard away from doing something foolish when he is alone at home during the night.

Here in Vietnam, I’ve become the security guard. Floating, unseen, through a world that doesn’t know I exist.

But something shifts as I’m typing these words. The loneliness doesn’t go away, but it becomes lighter, less sharp. I feel visible again. Not to the world, but to myself.

And it has nothing to do with you, my friend. You might not exist, and it wouldn’t matter. This feeling comes from something deeper.

Writing pulls what's buried into the light. It’s an exhausting struggle, but it matters.

Because even if no one else sees what I write, I do. Writing is the mirror. A place where I meet myself, face truths I can’t ignore, and remind myself that I exist.

I’m no longer floating. I’m anchored. Seen, if only by myself.

And isn’t that what we all want? To be seen, as we truly are.