The Middle - On Belonging, Anonymity, and the Relief of Not Performing

Returning to the Middle

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the middle.

Has life been quietly teaching me something about it over the course of my forty-one years? Is there more to the middle than we give it credit for?

In a culture that urges us to be first, to be better, to do more, the middle is rarely framed as a place worth staying. It’s often associated with settling or blending in. And yet, it’s the place I keep returning to.

As a child, I was acutely aware of hierarchy — even before I had language for it. In a child’s world, that hierarchy showed up in simple, visible ways: who ran the fastest, who finished their classroom work first, who was praised for keeping up.

My attention was always on staying close enough. I didn’t need to be first. I just didn’t want to be last — to fall behind in a way that felt noticeable. For reasons I didn’t fully understand at the time, this awareness was always present, quietly shaping how I moved through my days.

Adults called it competitiveness.
But it felt more like anxiety.

The relief always came after — when the performance ended and I was home again. Winning or losing didn’t linger. What mattered was that I hadn’t fallen behind, that I had stayed safely inside the group.

The middle, I’ve learned, isn’t neutral.
It’s active.
It offers cover.

Learning How to Keep Up

What the middle often asks in return is adjustment — small, nearly invisible shifts in behavior that help us stay legible, acceptable, close enough not to be singled out. Over time, those adjustments begin to look like personality.

I learned early what earned praise. Confidence. Energy. Toughness. I practiced becoming those things — not because they came naturally, but because they felt protective. Strength became a way to stay safe. Another way to belong without needing anything from anyone.

It took me a long time to realize that what looked like ambition was often just a fear of falling behind. I wasn’t trying to stand out. I was trying not to be noticed for the wrong reasons.

When Belonging Matters More Than Being Right

The cost of belonging became clearer to me later, during a psychology class experiment in college.

I remember sitting in a waiting area, knowing I was about to participate in a study but not knowing what it would involve. When my name was called, I was led into a small room where four other students were already seated in a row. I didn’t know them. I didn’t know that they were part of the experiment.

I was asked to sit in a specific seat — the one at the very end.

We watched a short video, and afterward the mediator asked a simple question about what we had just seen. The answer felt obvious. I knew it immediately.

The mediator started at the opposite end of the row and asked each student to answer out loud. One by one, every person ahead of me gave the same wrong answer. Let’s say the correct answer was A — they all said B.

By the time it reached me, doubt had crept in. Not doubt about what I had seen, but doubt about whether I was willing to stand alone in that moment. Sitting there, at the end of the row, going with the group felt safer than being separate.

So I went with the group.

Later, they explained what had happened. My response, they told me, was common.

Anonymity as Relief

If belonging requires performance, anonymity offers relief.

I felt this almost immediately afterward, during that same season of life in college, when I lived abroad in Mexico. What I loved most was how easily I could blend in. My dark hair, olive skin, and mixed background allowed me to experience the culture without being marked as an outsider. I wasn’t watched. I wasn’t categorized. I could simply move through the world as I was.

One of my favorite parts of each day was walking to and from school. It felt expansive in a way that’s hard to describe now. Back then, we didn’t have cell phones the way we do today. No one could track me. No one could reach me unless they waited. The strangers I passed didn’t know me — and didn’t need to.

I was just myself, moving through a place that didn’t ask me to perform.

At the time, I didn’t have language for presence or nervous systems or identity. I just knew how it felt in my body. Unobserved. Unmeasured. Free.

Looking back, I can see it clearly now. It wasn’t about fitting in.
It was about living without performing.

That anonymity wasn’t erasure.
It was relief.

Being No One and Everyone

The idea of anonymity as relief found me again in an unexpected place — while overhearing my children’s cartoon, Bluey.

In one episode, a character named Unicorse — a puppet — suddenly realizes that he is a puppet. He becomes upset and cries to Chili, the mother, that he is “no one.” She listens, then gently reframes it: being no one, she explains, also means being everyone.

The line stopped me.

Because both things are true. We are singular and irreplaceable — and we are also small, passing, woven into something vast. Individuality and insignificance don’t cancel each other out. They coexist.

For children, it’s a comforting idea.
For adults — especially mothers — it’s quietly radical.

There is something deeply calming about holding both at once.

But there are seasons of life where anonymity gives way to visibility — where being observed becomes part of the terrain.

Motherhood and the Pressure to Perform

Motherhood has brought this tension into sharper focus.

The urge to keep up doesn’t disappear — it multiplies. Milestones. Activities. Social moments. Emotional development. There is a constant, mostly unspoken awareness of how things look — not just for us, but for our children.

Not long ago, my younger girls and I were at the park. Aura and Ivy were collecting big fall leaves, holding them carefully like treasures. Aura set hers down to take a drink of water. A little boy picked it up and ran away. She looked at me.

I told her that if it was her leaf and she wanted it back, she could ask for it.

Before she had the chance, the boy took Ivy’s leaf right out of her hands. I said calmly, “Buddy, that is my daughter’s leaf.”

Before he could respond, his mother stepped in quickly and said, “Stop — that is my son and I will talk to him.”

I paused. I was caught off guard. I didn’t want to leave the park — we had just arrived — so I took a breath and went back to my girls. She proceeded to parent her son out loud. I wasn’t sure who it was for — me or him.

Standing there, I felt awkward. And then I felt something else — empathy.

I believed I was right to show my girls how to speak up for themselves. I also believed she was right that this was her son and her moment to handle. It wasn’t about who was right or wrong.

It was about the sudden awareness of being watched.
About parenting under observation.
About the quiet pressure to perform — even in ordinary moments.

Disappearing in the Herd

I don’t want to be part of the herd in the way we usually mean it — defined, labeled, absorbed.
I want to disappear in it.

To be held without being watched.
To belong without performing.

In the larger arc of a life, I keep coming back to this: the middle — the ordinary day, the unremarkable season, the pace that doesn’t impress — is often exactly where we are meant to be.

As Albert Einstein once said, “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”

Maybe the middle was never about hiding.
Maybe it was always about being held.

And maybe part of growing — as people, as mothers — is simply noticing how often we’re asked to perform, and remembering what it feels like to rest inside being no one… and everyone.