Letter to my mirror...
- Shailendra Tipparaju
- Apr 18
- 2 min read
Letter to my mirror : from a soul that looks connected, yet feels invisible.
My dear Mirror,
We’re more reachable than ever....
pinged, tagged, tracked, looped into threads, newsletters, photos, and posts.
Always just a message away.
But when life cracks open,
when the world feels too heavy to hold...
why do I still look around…
and see no one?
I’m surrounded.
But not held.
Visible.
But not felt.
My inbox is full.
My calendar packed.
But my heart?
Sometimes, it’s quieter than it should be.
We live in a strange contradiction:
A hyper-connected world...
where genuine connection feels…extinct.
A time when every move is documented,
but our being goes unnoticed.
Social abundance. Cosmic isolation.
It’s not the absence of people that aches,
it’s the absence of meaning in their presence.
The awkward small talk.
The automated “How are you?”
The celebrations everyone attends...
and the breakdowns no one notices.
We scroll endlessly...
not for joy,
but for evidence that we still matter to someone, to EVERYONE.
We post,
not to be connected,
but to be celebrated.
We laugh in group settings,
but the silence that follows feels heavier than the joke that sparked it.
We say “let’s catch up soon,”
but what we really mean is,
“Let’s avoid intimacy for another month.”
This isn’t loneliness from solitude.
This is loneliness in plain sight.
We know what people ate, where they traveled, what they wore...
but not what they’re battling at 3 a.m.
We’re in group photos, team shoutouts, wedding reels,
but can’t name one person we’d call when the world caves in.
Because here’s the truth:
Digital proximity has replaced emotional presence.
We’re trading connection for convenience.
And community for content.
And somewhere along the way...
we stopped feeling for each other,
And we have started trading for each other.
This isn’t a tech problem.
It’s a depth problem.
A willingness-to-feel problem.
A courage-to-be-vulnerable problem.
Because real connection demands something we’re trained to avoid:
Pausing.
Witnessing.
Listening without checking our phones.
Staying without rushing to respond.
We’ve mastered availability, yes,
but forgotten how to be present.
You can be everywhere.
But it means nothing if you’re not with anyone.
You can be well-known.
But it means nothing if no one truly knows you.
Thousands of connections mean nothing…
if none can sit with your grief, your doubts, your unspoken fears.
So Mirror, Mirror...
I’m done chasing virality.
Done mistaking performance for presence.
Done trying to be everything to everyone while being nothing to myself.
From now on,
I’ll seek fewer people,
but deeper conversations.
Fewer replies,
but truer resonance.
Because attention is abundant.
But affection?
That’s rare.
And where everyone around is sucked into the vortex of being seen...
maybe the most radical act left
is to feel again.
This is not a post.
It’s a pause.
A whisper beneath the noise.
A rebellion in the age of performative closeness.
A letter to myself.
And maybe, maybe a gentle reminder to someone just like me.
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