To Be... Under the Sun!
Who among us has not, at some moment, wished to be known? To enter a room and have all eyes turn to you; to have your name mentioned in a gathering you did not attend; to find your opinion sought even in matters in which you have no stake? I do not think we need anything more than honesty with ourselves to admit that deep within every person lies a small child who wants to be seen. This child may stubbornly try to hide that desire by claiming that no one’s opinion matters, but it remains, somewhere, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself, like any postponed desire.
The common image of fame resembles a tourist advertisement: smiling faces, doors opening before you knock, and a welcome that requires no effort to earn. A red carpet separates your fine shoes from that ordinary, dirty ground on which ordinary people walk. It is an image akin to tourist posters of the Golden Beach and the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, showing you the sun’s reflection with its sparkling light, but failing to tell you about its scorching heat at noon.
One might argue that the sun’s heat is a source of warmth we all need at times, and that is certainly true. But the problem, my friends, is that the sun does not only warm; it also exposes. The first thing a well-known person loses is the right to be ordinary. An ordinary person has the right to be tired on some days, irritable in certain situations, or mistaken in a hasty remark, and even foolish in some of their actions. Then they sleep and wake up, and everyone has forgotten what they said or did. But for those who live under the spotlight, every minor misstep is magnified, enlarged, and preserved, to the point that a single moment of weakness seems enough to cancel out years of stability. They discover that they are no longer judged by their overall character, but by the worst snapshot ever taken of them.
Then comes the harder problem of fame: people do not interact with you, but with the version of you they have constructed. They approach the image and distance themselves from the real person. Someone who has never sat with you for an hour loves you, and someone who has only heard your voice through a screen hates you. In both cases, you never know if what is being said truly concerns you. Praise is directed at a person you do not know, and criticism is aimed at someone who is not you, while you stand in the middle, wondering which version is closer to you.
More dangerous still, the image imposed upon you by others may begin to constrain you, making you a permanent prisoner of it. You find yourself censoring your words before you speak, not because they are wrong, but because they might “not suit you.” You delay expressing a new opinion because people have memorized your old one. You force a laugh in a contrived conversation with someone on a day when you cannot even bear to smile. Little by little, you become an employee of your own image, working full-time to guard it, while the person you were before fame sits in a distant corner, waiting for someone to return to them.
There is also a price that is rarely mentioned: the light itself. Applause is like any delicious treat consumed in excess; the body eventually requires a larger dose to feel the same effect. When attention wanes for a week or a month, some begin to suffer from a strange anxiety, unlike worries about livelihood or health. It is the fear of being forgotten. People write what they do not believe in order to remain in memory, and appear where they should not, so that no one can say they have disappeared.
This discussion does not concern celebrities alone. In the age of screens, we have all come to live under a small sun, each according to their number of followers. We count our words before publishing them, wait for engagement after posting, and suffer over comments written by strangers who neither know us nor are known by us. What was once a price paid by a few has become a tax paid by everyone, to varying degrees. The difference between us and the famous is not the nature of the sun, but its size.
Shade, my friend, is not a punishment as we imagine it while gazing at the light. Rather, it may be the only place where you can be yourself without anyone applauding or judging you. Those who find themselves under the spotlight may sometimes need a small umbrella to shelter what remains of themselves. But those who are still in the shade and dream of stepping out might ask themselves one question before taking that step: Do I want everyone to know me, or is all I really need just one person who truly understands me?
Dr. Sulaiman Al-Khudairi
