Do you ever have the feeling that you’re invisible to people?  Not just that they overlook you, but that you’re entirely 100%, invisibility-cloak-wearing invisible?  If you continually tell yourself you are (or aren’t) something, the law of attraction says that you will attract that to yourself.  I think that’s what happened to me with my invisibility.Throughout a large portion of my life, I’ve felt like I was invisible.  I was so quiet and unassuming at school that I flew under the radar.  Partly, this was done intentionally.  I was never one to draw attention to myself, but it did come naturally in some instances.  I was the kid at school that everyone disliked because I did little to no work and got the highest marks in the class.  Learning came naturally to me.  I would absorb and retain everything.  I shied away from the recognition because I didn’t want to be “that kid” – the weird, smart kid that no one wanted to play with.  But through force of trying to not be noticed, I became unnoticed.

I’ve often been left out of activities, not because I wasn’t there, but because people didn’t realize I was there.  I’ve been left out of invitations to parties, activities, etc. throughout my life.  I hadn’t really thought about this much until this past year.  As I’ve continued on my self-discovery journey through Reiki, I’ve become much more self-aware than I’ve ever been.  This is where the consideration of the invisibility came into being.

The most recent example of my invisibility came at my wife’s staff Christmas party last weekend.  We were sitting at our table chatting with the people around us when her boss came by and grabbed the husbands of the other teachers around us and ushered them all out to the photo booth to take pictures.  A few minutes later, they returned and when he saw me he said “You weren’t here when I came by a few minutes ago, were you?”  I looked up and smiled and said “I’ve been here all night.  But that’s okay, I’m invisible. I’m like a ninja.”  He was convinced that my chair was empty when he came by, even though I was sitting there talking to one of the other husbands sitting directly across from me.

While that’s one example, there are two repeating instances that I have noticed and acknowledged over this past year.  The first involves urinals.  Most urinals today are equipped with sensors so that they are touchless.  You stand there, do your business, walk away and it flushes.  Frequently, when I am standing at a urinal, it either will not flush at all and I need to push the button, or it will randomly start flushing midway through my emptying of my bladder – as though I just dematerialized.  At first, my thought process was “oh, maybe you kind of rocked backwards on your feet a bit and that did it.”  But then I started noticing it more and more.  Eventually, I started being very mindful and was certain that there was no movement of my body, yet the mid-stream flushing would still occur.

Another repeating situation is with automatic doors.  We have some in our building at work and at least 2-3 times per week, I nearly slam face-first into the doors because they do not open.  I’ll back up, walk forward again, and nothing.  Then someone else walks by and… opens.

It actually has me laughing now.  Every time it occurs, either in the bathroom or the hallway, I tell myself “obviously you weren’t here – invisible time!”  The more that I ponder it, I wonder if I’m actually living in the present moment during these instances.  Maybe this is part of what is causing this to happen for me.  I’ll need to be mindful of that going forward.

And there you have it.  You’ve now met the Invisible Man.

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