To coffee shop waitress, I’m table number five. In her heroic journey, I’m unnamed customer. My dramatic heartbreak registers as “usual customer looks sad today.” My life-changing promotion stays invisible in her narrative.

Our solipsistic brains assume we’re protagonists. But harsh mathematical truth: among eight billion humans, I’m statistical insignificance. My greatest triumph becomes someone’s Tuesday afternoon. My deepest crisis becomes background ambient.

Perspective shift shatters ego. At best friend’s wedding, I’m supporting cast. In her love story, I’m occasional comic relief. My romantic confession becomes awkward interruption in her real narrative.

Film theory teaches extras never know their own stories. They walk, talk, exist solely to populate main characters’ worlds. Perhaps I’m sophisticated extra in someone’s epic tale.

Most existential horror: my death triggers someone’s character development. “Remember coffee shop guy? He died. Made me realize life’s precious.” My entire existence reduced to someone else’s epiphany moment.

Yet profound beauty hides here. Background characters carry equally complex stories. My internal monologue spans universes. My pain, joy, fear—all real, though unwitnessed.

Perhaps wisdom lies in simultaneous acceptance: I’m protagonist in my story, but cameo in everyone else’s.