You see them everywhere, but you don’t really see them.
They are all around us, all of the time.
Taking our money, taking our tickets, taking our place in line.
They give too.
Steaming food on hot plates. An icy decaf frappucino. A pile of new clothes, security sensors carefully removed.
Filler people.
People like Lionel Prichard.
You don’t know Lionel Prichard, I’ll bet.
Lionel Pritchard is everyone.
And no one.
He is a monster, maybe make-believe, maybe frighteningly real.
He’s from outer-space.
Or the farm down the road.
In truth (whatever that might be these days) Lionel Prichard is a character in the movie ‘Signs’ – the alien movie by M. Night Shyamalan, which finds one forlorn family making its way through an alien invasion. Lionel Prichard is a blip on the screen – at first they mistakenly attribute the strange alien behavior to him, then he is later seen in the small-town army office filling out some form.
He is background noise.
A nuisance character who in this instance adds to the tension and mystery.
We know his full name, but that is all.
The world is filled with Lionel Prichards. We don’t notice them for the most part, unless they step out of their unconsciously-assigned roles. The barista who forgets you ordered decaf. The sales-person who neglects to take off the security sensor. The server who added the order of fries to your bill but never brought them to the table. As is too often the case, we only really notice when things go wrong.
Once in a happy while, the good comes through too. The unexpected pay-it-forward moment in the Starbucks drive-through. The sweet compliment of a stranger on the day you were feeling so shitty. The exquisite winks of grace from, dare I say it, God. Lionel Prichard is there in those moments.
They are the people who populate the world, but whom we never take the time to meet. To know.
Each one of them is the main character of their own sitcom or drama or movie or musical.
Each one is the star of their own story.
Whenever I’m flummoxed by someone’s behavior – bad or good – I think of Lionel Prichard. Most of us, whether we realize it or not, are Lionel Prichard. We are nobody to the vast majority of other people on this planet. It is a blessing and a curse to be so startlingly insignificant. But to the few, to the elect chosen ones we honor with a space of import in our otherwise unremarkable lives, we can be everything. The most meaningful and significant star in this small stretch of the universe. For those magnificent creatures, we must shine like the sun. And for all the other Lionel Prichards, we must remember to see their shine too.
