Nobody Cares
Not to sound too pessimistic, but I think it is true at the end of the day. This is more from a principles perspective than anything else. I think it is probably beneficial to live your life thinking that nobody cares about what you are doing. A chip on your shoulder attitude is part of this mindset, in that it may be helpful to live life as if you have something to prove and that you should make people care about you. However, I feel like the more important interpretation of this quote that is likely fundamentally true, is that people think about you a heck of a lot less than you think they do. In my life, if I take the portion of my waking thoughts that are about my own thoughts, feelings, biases, actions, past, present, and future, and put that over the portion of externally focused thoughts, it would probably round to zero. Not that I am overtly selfish or have a huge ego, but it is just impractical for 99% of people to genuinely think about others more than themselves. For starters, we have the problem that we do not know what goes on in anyone else’s head, and as long as we are mortal and operate in this plane of existence, that will continue to be the case. At best, we can try to come up with some empathetic version of what we think is going on in someone else’s mind, but this is ultimately a projection of our own thoughts into what we assume to be their world. The more people I have met and engaged with, the more I realize that I do not know anything or anyone. Even the person you spend the most time with in the world, if they were to somehow tell you every single thing they have ever thought, felt, or experienced in grave detail, there would still be things lost in translation. This is partially because of the limits of language, but mostly because our operating systems are uniquely shaped by our circumstances and as such, our views of situations each have their unique spin. If we take that as a fact, then it cannot even be the case that people think about you at all. In the best case scenario, they can be thinking about something that is a near approximation of you, and yet, fundamentally not you. In such an instance, it would be bizarre to place their thoughts or concerns at any level of importance beyond what is necessary to operate in a civil society. Many of my decisions and behaviors in my life have been impacted by the concern of judgment of others. Any mistake or slip up that I have gets replayed ad infinitum in my head, and more often than not, is immediately forgotten by anyone else involved. This is a helpful operating principle because it helps to take the weight and pressure off of everyday decisions that I make. I realize more and more these days that my life is the only life I experience and live, and it is the only life I can ever experience and live. There is no reason why I should not seek to maximize my experience and design my life in such a way as to make me the most happy. Selfish? Perhaps, but I think that positivity starts with the self. You cannot go out into the world broken and fix others. Put your oxygen mask on before you help others. Further, I think that it is actually through the connection with others and the deprioritization of the self that I yield the most personal happiness. As such, by being selfish and prioritizing my own wants and needs, I can actually be more altruistic than if I stay in my own head and ruminate on various scenarios and try to play 4D chess with every other party’s emotions as well, which I am really just guessing at.