how to make peace with the fact that you are just one more human?
We think we are very important. And that is okay. It is what we grow to believe. We think everyone cares about what we do, and that everyone cares about who we are. When you grow up in a small town, everyone knows everything about everyone. It’s stressful to have the constant pressure on you of social status, relationships and even career choices. It can almost feel that you can’t do whatever you want because everyone will find out and they might reject you.
To be rejected is something that we feel deeply. It can stay with us forever. People normally question why we care so much about what other people think. They think it’s easy to not care. To be honest, sometimes we are just pretending that we don’t care. It isn’t as easy as it sounds.
It takes a lot of growth, experience and learning to get to a point in which you believe that what you do is irrelevant to others.
Ever since I moved to London, that realization has become closer to the truth. Back at home, I was scared of doing funny things. You know, high school can be a harsh environment. Now I can feel like I can invent a random dance routine in the middle of the street and be okay, even if people give me weird looks.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still times in which I get offended or I feel self-conscious. It is all a work in progress.
How do we get from caring too much to want to not care?
There is a type of freedom that comes from believing that you are just in a floating rock living this one life that you have that opens up a lot of doors for you.
It is freedom from the parts of you that bind you to follow societal rules. Of course, we still need to be kind, we still need to be generous and receptive to the environment and care about others. But when it comes to our own lives, to the decisions that influence who we become, who we are and our experience on this Earth, we can’t allow “society” to take that away from us.
At the end of the day, we are part of this society and whether or not we want to; we contribute to it in someway, better for that to be a good contribution than a bad one.
In order to not care about what other people think of what you do with your life, you first have to not care about what other people do with their lives.
If your friend wants to leave their job, that makes them good money because they have an itch to explore the world by themselves with all the money that they have saved from their job. Let them, don’t judge them for it.
I believe that the most beautiful thing is watching people open up their eyes to the world around them and see them understand that nothing really matters and they have a limited amount on this Earth and that they want to explore it.
It can be very anxiety inducing to come to that realization, but once we integrate it and accept it, it opens so many doors of opportunity for us.
Back to the point.
We care too much about what people do because sometimes we have nothing else to do with our lives. It can be entertaining to watch other people live their lives, judge their decisions, cringe at whatever they do, but you are the one that is not living your life.
We have to want to not care.
We have to not give our unwanted opinion to people that don’t want it.
Are you about to tell your friend that the car that they want to buy is fugly? Why do you care if a car is ugly? Like seriously, maybe it gives it personality, maybe it makes your friend shine a bit more in the car? Literally, no one really cares, and it affects absolutely no one. So why does it affect you?
To want to not care, we have to want the good for everyone and accept that our definitions of “good” might not be the same as theirs. We have to stop and think for a moment. Is their decision harming them in some way that it’s actually harmful for them and not only harmful for me because of my association with them? No? Let people be.
Once you let people be, you can be
You become free from those judgments as well, because you stop judging yourself.
Disclaimer: We will forever judge, we will forever have an opinion on things, we will want things our way and we will want to shift the narrative to become the fairytale world that we have in our heads. It is not about hating ourselves for this judgement or about judging ourselves because we are judgy. It is about embracing it and observing it and being like “oh wow, I’m being very judgemental right now, why?
And when you stop judging your cringeyness, your awkwardness and all the weird dance moves that you come up with when you are alone, you open up to your true nature. You feel truly human and truly alive.
The best part is when you get to share this with other people that have done the same work. Embracing each other weirdness is a gift.
I choose to no longer cringe when people tell a bad joke. I just laugh at the fact that we are all dumb sometimes.
With this now, I allow myself to experiment with making bad jokes. Why was I so afraid of it? Who knows?
Freedom in anonymity
Another big part of this dilemma is the fact that we are truly small. We can have an impact if we want to, but we are still small. We still fit our own space.
For those of you that live in a big city in which you get into public transport and you never see the same people, how does it feel?
It can feel daunting to feel tiny. It can be scary and you can feel you have no power whatsoever. Because at that moment, you are not any more special than any other person standing in that bus/tube/tram.
You become a blip in the transport system.
Now, if you change that perspective of feeling small… you can feel incredibly free.
You are telling me I will see none of these people ever again? You say that whatever I do will probably just make them laugh, cringe, or think this is weird? Do I really mind inconveniencing them with my existence and my personality? I will never see them again.
When people talk about being the main character, I wonder if we got the idea a little sideway.
It is along the same lines of what I’m talking about, but it goes a bit more towards grandiosity.
In this main character idea, we put ourselves in the center of the world and we believe that no one else cares or that they care too much about our great existence. We think we impact every single person around us.
On the other hand, what I am talking about is the realization that truly no one cares about what we do with our lives and that everyone is way too focused, thinking that they are the main character to care about what you do.
Main character = I am so special that I can do whatever I want and all the plot revolves around me so I’m going to get everything that I desire, because no one is like me.
This other idea = I am literally just another soul standing in this globe trying to be human and live their lives. Everyone is too busy with theirs. I’m going to do whatever I want and observe my surroundings as opportunities align with me.
Arrogance vs. humbleness
Sometimes feeling incredibly relevant to everyone’s lives can do more damage to us and the second we don’t feel like we are “doing something for the plot” or “being the main character” which is basically having everyone’s attention, we feel a relapse and we begin our constant search for attention.
That is why the concept of this is the freedom in the anonymity.
Freedom in the unknown
The freedom in the unknown comes with the things that we don’t plan in our lives. It comes with the idea that we literally do not know what we are going to do next. With the idea that you can decide and do things and figure things out.
Sometimes it is not the best idea to be impulsive. But understanding our anonymity makes us feel like we can choose whatever path we desire in life.
Tomorrow you can choose to be a martial arts teacher and spend the next 15 years’ training and then teach for another 15.
Life can be so random, I always find it exciting when people tell me their plot twists.
I am like how did you get from being a criminal lawyer in New York to being a photographer vanlifing in Africa?
I will expand more on the freedom of the unknown in a separate blog post next week.
Prompts for freedom in anonymity
5 prompts to ground yourself on Earth and understand that you are not that special whilst feeling freer
- As you exist in the present moment, how much do you want to know about other people’s lives and why?
- Describe how you would live your life in matters of attitude if it you were to die in a month
- What are the things that you think are the most cringey about yourself? Why do you love them?
- Do you really mind inconveniencing random people with your existence and your personality? If so, why?
- What path would you take in life if it really were up to you (which it is, start acting like that person)?
I know that knowing that you are just one more on this Earth feels horrible. I know because it sometimes weighs on me to not be special, but think about what matters more… Do you want to be special or do you want to be free?
