Emily Dickinson – I Am Nobody

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us; you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one’s name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

 Who Are You?

Come and join the society of nobodies. Can you handle that? Can you wander around the wide world without being known or pointed at? Can you keep the secret of our kind, the nobodies? Can this life go on without our being involved in some faction, sect, religion, community or tribe? Will you accept me as a man who belongs to no other man? Will you no longer belong to anybody, but yourself?

How hard is the question of doing what we want to do in this life without being noticed or known? Can we pass by the tree we planted, see others eating the hell out of it, and do nothing but planting another tree next to it and move along the way? It is not easy to be your own judge and your own eyes that can see the path without the help of others’ spectacles.

I don’t want to conquer the world with my ideas and ideologies; I just want to see the world through my own eyes to make the perception special not like what the sects and cults and religions and factions and tribes want me to see it. I am nobody to tell them what to do; I am only trying hard and struggle to be true to myself and to the world by looking, seeing and saying what my own heart perceives without any additions or filtering doctrines. I see nobody is wrong as I see myself right. For this I have no reason to fight; I am who I am. I am not here to tell you that I am the all-knowing; I am here to say that I have a different pair of eyes and a different set of heart and mind that made me understand life in my very own way, and I am eager to meet you and see life through your eyes, heart, and mind. I am nobody seeking a vantage point where I can see life as it is for me and celebrate the difference we have between you and me. So come and join the Nobodies. I made it a tribe already then, have I not? Yet, at least it is a tribe with no chief, a tribe with respect, a tribe with no ridiculous laws, a tribe with no other subgroups, a tribe of all of us embracing the differences we have and looking at life the way we want, share our views with our brothers and sisters, and enrich for once this special species we belong to. I am nobody; are you the same as me? Come and let the apparitions enjoy their own shallow society.