The Lava Lamp

There’s a strange experience that some people carry through life that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.

It’s the feeling of being invisible.

Not literally invisible, of course. People see you. They talk to you. They interact with you. But somehow, the deeper parts of who you are often seem to pass right by others unnoticed.

For most of my life, I’ve had this quiet feeling of standing just outside the circle.

I’ve been present in rooms, in conversations, in relationships—but not always fully seen.

It’s not always dramatic. It’s not always painful in an obvious way. Sometimes it’s subtle. A conversation moves past you. A thought you share gets overlooked until someone else says the same thing later and suddenly everyone notices. A feeling you express lands in silence.

Little moments like that add up over time.

And after a while, you start to internalize something without even realizing it.

You start to assume your voice might not matter as much.

So you talk a little less.

You hesitate a little longer before sharing what you think.

You learn to observe instead.

Observation becomes a skill. You notice dynamics in rooms. You notice tone shifts in conversations. You notice what people need emotionally before they say it out loud.

In many ways, becoming an observer can be a beautiful thing. It can create empathy. It can create awareness. It can even make someone a very thoughtful listener.

But it can also come with a quiet cost.

Because when you spend years being the one who sees everyone else, but rarely feels deeply seen yourself, a strange pattern forms.

You begin to feel like a background character in your own life.

Not intentionally. Not because anyone sat down and decided that’s the role you should play. It just happens slowly over time.

Years ago, I took a leadership program where everyone in the group gave each other a word or symbol that represented what they saw in that person.

The word they chose for me was “lava lamp.”

At first I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

But then they explained.

They said a lava lamp takes time to warm up. Someone has to plug it in. At first it just sits there and doesn’t look like much of anything. But once it warms up, it becomes beautiful and mesmerizing to watch.

That description stayed with me.

Because in a lot of ways, it felt true.

I’m not always the loudest person in the room. I don’t always jump into conversations immediately. Sometimes I take time to warm up, to observe, to feel safe in the space before I fully show up.

But when I do warm up, something different happens.

There’s depth. There’s thought. There’s connection.

For a long time, I interpreted my slower way of entering spaces as something that made me easy to overlook. Something that made me invisible.

But maybe it was never invisibility.

Maybe it was just a different rhythm.

And maybe the beauty of a lava lamp was never meant to appear instantly.

Maybe some things are meant to take time to warm up before they show their full color.

But here’s something else I’ve learned.

A lava lamp doesn’t actually have to wait for someone else to plug it in.

I can plug it in myself.

I can choose to speak.

I can choose to step forward.

I can choose to let my thoughts, my presence, and my voice move in the room instead of waiting quietly on the sidelines.

Maybe I’ve never been invisible.

Maybe I’ve just been warming up.