From Invisible to Indefatigable

 

indefatigable - adjective - persisting tirelessly

Remember the invisibility cloak featured in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling? Crafty, young wizard Harry could slip into it on occasion and disappear into thin air to become the proverbial, unnoticed fly on the wall for reasons pertaining to subterfuge. Well, if fictive Harry were actual and living in today's world, a cloak would be completely unnecessary. To disappear, all he would have to do is grow old, retire from a given profession and/or surround himself with forgetful friends to feel completely out of the picture.

Case in point: yesterday, I had the ill fortune of feeling invisible sans the desire to be imperceptible– a total, complete, absolute downer because I wanted so badly to stay in the picture or even just be in the picture. A friend and former colleague of mine had texted me a week or so ago to tell me that she had finally decided to retire after nearly fifty years of teaching in the same middle school. For the past five years, indefatigable me tried to convince her to take the plunge and join those of us public school pensioners free from the systemic abuse of the daily grind, and last month, she found the courage to put in the right papers and start a new chapter. It all sounds fine and dandy but upon opening Facebook yesterday afternoon, I saw a photograph of my friend, her friends, and colleagues at her retirement party. The only face out of the frame entirely was mine. Intentionally or unintentionally, someone had thrown the invisibility cloak over me, and I was left out of the mix. Naturally, I felt awful that I had not received an invitation to the affair.

In life, mishaps like this occur. I am sure you've heard the adage, "Out of sight, out of mind." The older you become, the more aware of your own relative insignificance you are, and perhaps, the more fragile your ego becomes. Sadly, we aren't indispensable; we can be easily replaced. When we leave a building, a town or city, a state, a country, a life, the world keeps turning without us. But while we are still around wherever we are, we can strive to be indefatigable, just more on the invincible side rather than the invisible. Another mutual friend who was also left huddling under the invisibility cloak and I decided to forgive and forget and treat our newly retired friend to a makeshift celebratory breakfast. We figured that if the door to one party is locked, we would unlock the door on our own. Do the same and invite everyone you've ever known so that nobody falls victim to invisibility. Whatever you do, when a situation is humiliating, don't throw in the towel, just the invisibility cloak.

Sometimes, solutions come down simple common sense. 

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