No one is watching you

Last night at dinner my friend Mark asked us what advice we’d give our 17-year-old selves. It’s a very Mark question. His little sister was in town so he felt like older brothering her.

When it came time for him to answer his own topic, he paused swirling his red wine and with usual gravitas said:

“Just remember that no one is watching you. No one cares. It took me a while to figure that out.”

I think it’s a really good point to make.

So many people, myself included, overestimate the extent to which others are paying attention when we do things.

It’s part of the fundamental human problem which is that we are all trapped inside of our own heads. And so everything that we perceive has us as the main character.

So when we walk into a room in which we don’t know anyone, we think that the spotlight is on us, that we’re the only ones in that situation, that we stand out as impostors. When we do something unconventional like decide to quit our job and go live far away, we think that we’re causing a scandal and that everyone must be talking about it.

Every move feels heavy under the weight of a thousand eyes.

In middle school I always thought that my getting good grades had a heavy significance and that people would notice and care a whole lot if I got a B+.

In high school I thought that everyone was watching which girl I’d ask to the prom or which college I’d end up attending.

In college, at parties where everyone made fools of themselves, I thought that people paid particular attention to how big of a fool I made of myself. I thought that people would notice if I didn’t make it to an event or that I hadn’t done an internship in finance.

In all of these cases, I now realize that no one was paying attention. It felt like the stakes were high and I had a big audience. But really I could have done anything and people would not have reacted any differently.

They have their own lives to worry about.

How much do you think about other people? Well, it’s likely that they think about you just as much…

Every day we walk around and witness people being laughed at. They transgress social norms. They do something that does not entirely blend into “normal” behavior and so the standard reaction is for people to stop, watch, point, laugh, stare, take photos.

But the next day even that is gone, washed from memory.

Everything is a clean canvas once again.

What this means is that if no one is paying attention, you may as well express yourself as you’d like, as you were as your uninhibited toddler self.

When you start to do that you might start doing things that others are afraid to.

(And yes, then maybe people will start paying attention.)

Thank you for reading.

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