Would You Still Create If No One Ever Knew?

On ego, impact, and the quiet ache for recognition

There’s a question I’ve been circling lately—one I can’t quite answer.

Would I rather be known during my life for something I created, even if it changes nothing… or be unknown in my lifetime, only for that same work to make a real, lasting impact long after I’m gone?

At first, the answer feels easy. I want to matter. I want to be the one whose work makes a difference, who helps push humanity a little further toward light. I want to be in that second group—the Van Goghs and Dickinsons and Boltzmanns—those who suffered invisibly, only to be honored in hindsight.

But if I’m honest… I also want to be recognized now.

There’s something in me—call it ego, call it hunger—that doesn’t just want to do meaningful work. It wants to be seen doing it. It wants to know the work landed. That it moved someone. That I wasn’t just whispering into the void.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this.

I think a lot of us wrestle with this quiet ache. The need to matter. To be heard. Even when we dress it up in the language of service or impact or “making the world better,” there’s often a thread of ego underneath. A wish to be seen as the one who did it.

I look at someone like Ludwig Boltzmann—who changed the course of science but died thinking he had failed. He couldn’t see the ripple his work would make. He couldn’t feel the gratitude that came a century too late. How many of us could survive that kind of silence?

I don’t know if I could.

That’s the part I don’t want to admit. That sometimes, the applause matters more to me than the legacy. Sometimes I crave the warmth of recognition more than the cold permanence of some distant impact. It’s not always noble. It’s just real.

But then, when I sit with that discomfort long enough, something else opens up.

Because there’s also this other part of me—a quieter one—that still wants to create, even when no one’s listening. That wants to write things down before they vanish. That wants to wrestle with meaning not because I’ll be praised for it, but because I need to understand something deeper. Something about myself. Something about being alive.

Maybe that’s where the real tension lives: between the ego that wants affirmation and the soul that wants truth.

Thoreau wrote, “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” That line has always stuck with me. We speak—write, paint, compose—because we’re trying to make sense of ourselves. And sometimes the only way to do that is out loud.

Still, it’s hard not to hope someone hears it.

Sometimes I wonder if the real courage isn’t in creating something brilliant, but in continuing to create even when no one notices. In trusting that the work means something, even if you never get to see the echo.

But I won’t pretend I’m above wanting the echo.

I want my daughters to read my words one day and understand me. I want to make someone feel less alone. I want my voice to ripple, even faintly, through someone else’s thoughts. And maybe that is ego. Or maybe it’s just being human.

There’s a tenderness in admitting how much we want to be known.

And yet, I’m learning that meaning doesn’t always come from being known. Sometimes it comes from doing the work anyway. From planting seeds you may never see bloom. From telling the truth even if no one is clapping.

Maybe, in the end, that’s the real legacy: that we created because it mattered to us. That we showed up to the page, the lab, the studio—not for fame or immortality—but because something in us wouldn’t let us do otherwise.

So I return to the question again, and this time it lands differently:

Would I still create if no one ever knew?

God, I hope so.

But I also hope… someone does.