The Invisible Man

I noticed a lot of people are reflecting at the end of the year on life and living,

and how to move forward. It reminds me of a quote from the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This comes at the end of the book, after a riot in Harlem, where the protagonist hides underground to escape the chaos caused by radical politics he was involved in. I think we all want to make sense of our lives and improve and make sense of what happens to us.

“And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals. Thus, having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge. And there's still a conflict within me: With Louis Armstrong one half of me says, "Open the window and let the foul air out," while the other says, "It was good green corn before the harvest."... 

Perhaps that's my greatest social crime, I've overstayed my hibernation, since there's a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play...

Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: 

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

(Ellison, The Invisible Man)

The last line is difficult, but do you have an interpretation of it? My interpretation is that the speaker (who feels invisible) feels marginalized and disconnected from society. Does he speak for something greater than himself and is the feeling of disconnectedness a common human experience?

I hope to be able to help others communicate and connect with others in an increasingly disconnected world. We shouldn’t have to feel like faces in a crowd, we all have our own individual stories and are unique just by being who we are.