The myth of Constant relevance: Visibility isn’t the same as purpose

12 July 2025

Over the past few months, I’ve felt trapped in my own body. My mind races with ideas, urgency, and a desire to be productive; while my body simply…won’t respond. I’ve sat, painfully aware, as the minutes turned into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, and weeks into months. Just lying there. Waiting. Waiting for my body to catch up with the demands of reality.

No matter what I tried, nothing helped. My body refused to cooperate. And then, just like that, one day — it stops. The freeze lifts. I’m suddenly back in the flow, fully immersed in the things that once brought me joy. As if nothing had ever been wrong.

This experience is hard to put into words. It’s even harder to talk about. I’ve battled this in silence for years, hiding it behind closed doors. It’s as if my body reaches a point where it can no longer tolerate any form of social interaction. I go numb. Not sad, not angry. Just…nothing. I keep functioning for survival and for my son. But I feel like a shell. Drifting. Disconnected. Directionless.

This time, though, it’s been different.

Usually, this freeze is accompanied by physical ailments. But oddly, I’ve been the healthiest I’ve felt in years. That’s when I realised: my body wasn’t shutting down because I was sick. The sickness was a signal; my body’s way of demanding rest. And now that I’m physically well, the freeze still came. Which forced me to ask deeper questions.

For the first time, I dared to ask a professional why I am like this. Why do I need so much solitude? Why doesn’t ‘isolation’ affect me the way it seems to affect others?

There were no neat answers. But the process of asking helped me uncover something important: solitude is MY norm. It’s what my body and spirit need to reset. And yet, I’ve spent years forcing myself into constant social interactions because that’s what society tells us is ‘normal.’ We praise extroversion. We label introversion as weakness or lasiness.

But I’m learning.

I’m learning to listen to what my body truly needs. I’m learning that stepping away from social media and from the noise isn’t something to feel guilty about. It’s a form of healing. And I’m learning that all the paths I’ve been called to walk (though beautiful and meaningful) demand more social energy than I naturally have. That’s why solitude isn’t optional for me. It’s essential.

So why am I sharing this?

Because I want to break the stigma. I want you to know that it’s okay to disappear for a while. It’s okay to pause. We live in a world obsessed with visibility and relevance — online and offline. But that constant pressure is a distraction from our true purpose. How can we reflect, grow, or stay grounded in faith if we’re always plugged into someone else’s expectations?

This endless drive for validation —for likes, shares, applause— feels spiritually hollow. Detached from God. Detached from meaning. Detached from the quiet wisdom that comes in solitude. So many of the things we chase today are condemned across spiritual traditions. And yet we follow the crowd, becuase we’ve been taught that if it’s popular, it must be right.

But that’s a lie.

We are straying from our natural way of life. Giving power to things that drain us. And if we’re not careful, these patterns will lead to our undoing.

So here’s my plea:

Allow yourself rest. Give yourself permission to disappear. Silence the noise.

There is power in solitude. There is clarity in reflection. There is the real you waiting to be rediscovered.

You don’t have to be constantly available. You don’t have to be seen. Strength doesn’t always look loud. Sometimes, it looks like stillness. And sometimes, the greatest growth happens in the quiet.

Until next time — keep the music alive and buzzing.

Carnita Bee