They say his name, Elon Musk, and it comes with images I’ve seen a thousand times. Rockets, factories, interviews, things that feel bigger than anything I can hold in my hands. Sometimes it feels like he lives in a place that is always moving forward, always somewhere just out of reach.
But that’s not how I know him.
I know him in smaller ways. In the quiet moments when everything slows down just enough. When he’s sitting next to me, not looking at a screen, not answering questions, just listening. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it feels different from the version of him the world sees. Less distant. More real.
There are times when I watch people watch him. Their eyes follow him like he’s carrying something important, something they don’t want to miss. I’ve learned to notice that feeling, the way attention fills a room before he even says anything. And sometimes I wonder what it’s like for them, to only know that version of him. The one who is always building, always thinking ahead.
For me, it’s more complicated.
He is someone who might be thinking about Mars while I’m trying to tell him about something that happened in my day. And yet, when he turns toward me, really turns, it feels like all of that disappears for a moment. Like the future can wait. Like I’m not competing with it.
I don’t always understand the things he works on. They feel far away, like stories that belong to someone else. But I understand the way he looks when he’s tired, the way he tries to stay present even when his mind is somewhere else. I understand that being who he is does not make him less human, just more divided between different worlds.
Growing up with someone the world is always watching means you learn early that people think they know him. They talk about him like he’s an idea, not a person. And maybe that’s true for them. But for me, he’s still someone who exists in moments that no one else sees.
I think that’s what stays with me the most.
Not the scale of what he’s building, but the small spaces in between. The ones where he’s not trying to change anything, not trying to prove anything. Just there, even if only for a little while.
And somehow, those moments feel bigger than everything else.
