I’m not the Main Character, but I’m free.

I’m not the Main Character, but I’m free.

This is what happens when you’re not the centre of every narrative. Embrace it.

Helen Higgins

Oct 18, 2026

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A few years ago, social media became obsessed with the idea of “main character energy”. At first, I quite liked it because there appeared to be something quite healthy about the concept. Too many people move through life apologising for themselves, and they shrink their ambitions, abandon their interests, or spend years trying to satisfy expectations that were never theirs to begin with.

Encouraging people to become active participants in their own lives rather than passive observers seemed, on the surface at least, like a positive thing.

The trouble is that too much of a good thing can be bad for us.

What begins as self-possession can quietly transform into self-absorption, and what begins as confidence can quickly become a lack of curiosity. The worst part is that what begins as the belief that your life matters can become the assumption that everyone else’s matters a little less. I think one of the easiest mistakes to make as an adult is forgetting that every person we encounter is the protagonist of their own narrative.

A few years ago, the writer John Koenig coined the word

sonder

to describe the sudden realisation that every stranger is living a life as complex, emotionally charged, and unique as each of our own. This could be the person serving your coffee, or the colleague sitting opposite you. It’s the elderly man waiting at a bus stop, too. Every one of them possesses a catalogue of memories, anxieties, ambitions, regrets, private jokes, disappointments, and hopes that I’ll never fully know. Neither will you.

So many people now spend much of their lives behaving as though other people exist only in relation to us. I have a close friend who forgot my birthday. Yes, it was hurtful, but whereas many would remember the hurt, they’d rarely consider what occupied their friend’s attention to cause that oversight. We remember the colleague who seemed abrupt but rarely consider what happened before they arrived at work that morning, and we remember the message that went unanswered but not that specific conversation topics might have someone else struggling to answer.

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The novelist Iris Murdoch believed that love was, in part, “the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.” People are trapped inside their own perspectives, and I’ve always found Murdoch’s observation unsettling because of how accurate it can feel at times.

Other people are real to us, obviously, but recognising the full reality of another person requires effort, attention, imagination, and humility. Main character energy doesn’t take that into consideration.

It requires accepting that their inner life is every bit as important to them as ours is to us. The stories and novels we revere are mostly designed around a central consciousness. We understand the protagonist intimately, so we know their motivations and sympathise with their mistakes. Even when they behave badly, we have access to the reasoning behind their actions, so it provides a softening and an excuse. I recently read the exceptional

‘The Things We Do To Our Friends’ by Heather Darwent

, in which Clare, the central protagonist, excuses her behaviour repeatedly throughout. Of course, she’s an unreliable narrator, as are we all, but this extends further.

Real life offers no such luxury. In reality, we’re all supporting characters in somebody else’s narrative. The difficult colleague is the protagonist of her own story, and the unreliable friend is the protagonist of his. This also includes the ex-partner who left, the stranger who was rude, or a neighbour who always complains. All of them wake up each morning convinced, just as the other is, that they’re the central character moving through a complicated world.

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The older I get, the more I suspect that maturity has less to do with confidence and more to do with perspective.

Children naturally experience themselves as the centre of the universe. Teenagers often believe everyone is watching them. Adults eventually discover that most people are too busy worrying about themselves to pay nearly as much attention as we imagine. Many of the embarrassing moments we replay at 3:00am are memorable only to us, and many of the perceived judgements we carry around never truly happened. Most people are so occupied by their own stories that they forget about us, in exactly the same way we’re occupied by ours.

Sometimes, though, the lack of acknowledgement of others is genuinely harmful. I’ve seen this dynamic play out within my own family during periods of grief, where several people can experience the same loss while remaining completely unable to imagine how another person might be carrying it. I sat with the pain of the ironic realisation that I could and do consider their perspective, but they couldn’t and won’t do the same for me.

It occurred to me that I have a sense of freedom here, though. When we stop viewing ourselves as the sole protagonist, curiosity becomes easier because we become less certain, less defensive, and less inclined to reduce people to fixed categories.

The colleague is no longer simply difficult, the friend is no longer simply unreliable, and the woman with the pram is no longer simply selfish. We begin to wonder what experiences created the person standing in front of us.

That curiosity

matters

.

Most relationships deteriorate because we stop discovering altogether. We conclude that we already know who somebody is. The philosopher Alain de Botton has written extensively about the dangers of assuming we understand other people too quickly. Once that happens, attention disappears, as does curiosity and the opportunity for growth. The person remains, but our interest in understanding them doesn’t.

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I think the hidden problem with main character energy is that it can tempt us to believe our own narrative is the only one worth examining. Encouraging people to value themselves isn’t a problem; I truly believe that part is necessary. Sometimes, though, it encourages certainty at precisely the moment curiosity would serve us better.

The most interesting people I know aren’t the ones who insist upon their importance; they’re the ones who remain fascinated by everyone else’s. I remain perpetually in awe of them and try to emulate them whenever I can. They ask questions, listen carefully, notice details - and they remember those details when possible, too. They understand, and remind themselves, that every person they meet is carrying a world invisible to them. That strikes me as a far more compelling way to move through life than seeing yourself as the protagonist of every scene. After all, life is not a novel, even when we wish that it was.

There is no single central character.

There are billions on this planet.

The challenge is learning to remember that other people are living stories as rich and complicated as our own, and the most mature form of main character energy is recognising that everybody else has it too. There’s freedom in realising that you’re not the sole protagonist of every story.

The world becomes larger.

Other people become more interesting.

Certainty gives way to curiosity.

Curiosity, unlike certainty, leaves room for growth.

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