Life is short. Be yourself.
Last fall I took a quick work (photography) trip to San Francisco. It had been a decade since I’d been in the city, and it was fun to be back. Less than 24 hours after arriving I was in an Uber back to SFO. So when I looked out the window I thought that perhaps the ‘jet lag’ of being out of my known world had me hallucinating.
There in the next lane was the craziest car I had ever seen. It had extended spinning cameras on each of the headlights and taillights. On the top was a rotating satellite looking thing that kept spinning around. I almost asked my Uber driver about it, but I didn’t want to seem naive to the big city life so I kept my mouth shut. (This is also why I didn’t get a picture of it.) It was a strange sight.
As we continued through the city on the way to the airport I continued to ponder what I had just seen. With all its cameras and antennae pointing outward and in constant motion it was like the car was incessantly seeking external validation. (Which a brief check with my friend google let me know that, as a self driving Waymo, I guess it was.)
Seeing that crazy car made me think of how easy it is to go through life with all of our ‘cameras’ pointing outward. Seeking external validation. It is as though we are asking, “Am I okay? Do I fit in? Am I accepted or acceptable? Who do I need to be to fit in this situation?”
I was still considering all of this as I happened to look up from my phone and out the window again. Just as we were driving past I saw a large slogan painted in black typewriter font on the side of a plain white brick wall.
Life is short. Be yourself.
There it was! The answer to the question the Waymo had stirred in me. Living life with one’s ‘cameras’ pointed outward, always scanning the horizon, looking for external validation risks ignoring missing the point entirely - the passenger inside. The question is Who am I?
Life is short. Be yourself.
P.S. photo credit and thanks go to my friend @christinrice who happened to be driving past a few weeks later and got the pic
