In a time when visibility is mistaken for value, I want to shine a light and celebrate the unseen work. It defies the algorithm, the applause, the curated vanity of our age. It insists that worth is not measured by metrics but by quiet integrity—the artist painting with no one to see, the mother raising a child without gratitude, the thinker wrestling with questions that may never be answered.

We are told that to be unseen is to be irrelevant. But what if? What if unseen work, done without validation, unpolluted by the hunger for likes and praise is WORK nevertheless?

Invisibility terrifies us because it asks us to find meaning in something deeper than being watched. But in this solitude lies freedom. To work unseen is to resist the shallow gaze of a world obsessed with surfaces. It is to say: I will create, I will care, I will live—not for your approval, but because I must.

The unseen work is the foundation. The rest is noise.

This work, though unseen, is no less vital—it presses itself into existence like a tree growing under ice, its roots moving toward a deeper water. It does not beg for recognition; it asks only for itself to be done.

And you, standing at the edges of your own invisibility, have felt this. You have toiled where no one clapped their hands, where no chorus came to praise. The hours you gave to the effort, the nights you spent stitching beauty into the fabric of the world—these were yours alone. They hung in the air like breath in winter, fleeting and seen by none but you.

The unseen work, unobserved and unrewarded, is freed from the prison of performance. Its worth is not tied to applause, but to the very act of creating, of giving oneself to something that may never rise above the tide of the ordinary. It is in this ordinariness, in the daily, unlit tending, that the eternal takes root.

Do not dismiss it. Do not think it lesser. The unseen—the work that no one will thank you for—this is the substance of a life truly lived. It is the mother’s patience in the small hours. It is the artist painting in a room no one enters. It is the letter written and never sent, the forgiveness given without words, the seeds sown without hope of the harvester’s reward.

You must learn to love this invisibility, as Rilke wrote of solitude.

You must understand that this absence of acclaim is not a void but a womb, where what is most real in you grows without fear of distortion.

There is a secret grace in continuing without notice, in becoming the silent stream that shapes the stone. The unseen work asks for courage, yes, but it also asks for faith—the faith to believe that even in the dark, you are creating something worthy. The faith to trust that invisibility is not the end, but the beginning of depth.

And perhaps, in the end, you do not need to be seen at all. Perhaps the truest work—the work of shaping a soul, of bearing love into the world—is not meant to be applauded. It is meant only to be made, because in making it, it makes us.

This poem, is for you, The Unseen Work:

You will not see me,

but I am here,

hands deep in the soil of the unseen.

I build the bridges

you walk without thanks,

stitch the seams of your days in silence.

No spotlight warms my face,

no stage calls my name.

Still, I work,

still, I work,

still, I work.

For my worth is not a mirror.

It does not shine back at you.

It hums in the roots of the world,

where only the brave dare to listen.

I am inviting you to gather together to Mapping the Invisible. We will ask ourselves: What invisible work sustains our lives? Who can you thank today? For more info and registration here.

You can download more poems in defiance of what rules us, to lit up our souls here. A renewal of old myths, old narratives and obsolete systems.

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