Everyone’s too busy thinking about themselves to think about what you’re doing.
This sounds like it would be a punch to the gut, but it was one of the most catalytic pieces of advice I received growing up. It was both a warning and a blessing of security. People were all too busy living their own lives, absorbed in their own affairs to care about me or what I did. It was as liberating as it was terrifying.
The liberation came from the fact this meant that I was basically invisible, even in the limelight. If I gave a speech in a class, no one really cared. The projected faces of judgment and disgust became the blank face of apathy and boredom. My own anxiety evaporated quickly from the realization they were just pretending to listen because they had to, not because they were actively critiquing the terrible topic of the week in our class.
The mixed bag from this quote is that unless you do something absolutely awful or especially spectacular, you will be largely forgotten. No one really cares about you or your work. Success and failure are basically the same unless you push the limits for better or for worse. Even serial killers are largely forgotten unless they manage to top the last atrocity.
This may even be true for your friends and family. You might just get a “That’s nice dear,” in response to the cutting-edge work you do. Not everything (or even necessarily anything) you do is going to mean something to everyone or anyone.
Reacting to the Nonreactive
The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy, and it’s hard to face apathy. Someone not caring can be worse than hatred. If they hate your work, you know it at least stirred something, while no reaction means it didn’t do anything for better and for worse.
You can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t try. The more you sellout on forcing accessibility to a given idea, the more dilute the concept behind it. Some items are going to be pretty universal, others are going to be niche. Make it the best of where it belongs.
Most people won’t care about your new pet language or your essay. You care and that’s what matters. React to nonreaction and apathy by being stoic.
A Stoic Approach
Stoicism is often misunderstood as being emotionless. The irony of the matter is that the Stoics were quite the opposite. As Marcus Aurelius said: “A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.” Things are going to happen and you have no real control over some of them, so enjoy what you can while you can. Live for the moment as completely as you can.
You can only control so much of any experience, so focus on what you can control. You can’t control how others receive your work, but you control how it is delivered and the quality. Do the best you can for the sake of the experience rather than for the result and you will get better quality with less work. This doesn’t mean to ignore the result, but don’t obsess over it.
Don’t worry about what can go wrong, but do be ready for things to backfire. If you’re in front of people, there could be a heckler, there could be a technical issue, there could be anything. Prepare for what you can to make what you can control that much smoother. You can’t stop someone from being rude, but you can change how you react to their rudeness. Do you fan the flame or let it burn itself out?
Avoiding Nihilism
The fact that no one really cares is the sucker-punch from this concept that you don’t feel for a while. No one really cares, but it’s easier to stay motivated when you think that others are actively watching and judging what you’re doing. Most people are going to try and be polite and reasonable with your efforts and give you kudos.
The universe is destined to die, as am I. We can choose to dwell in the darkness of the distant future, or accept that we can only control the here and now. Discard your mistakes once you extract the lesson they contain. Learn from the past and grow to resist the uncontrollable parts of our lives. We can’t control the future, nor should we, so live for the moment and take things as they come.
Making People Care
People don’t care about what you do until it impacts them. How is what you’re doing impacting others? Is it impacting them for the better or for the worse?
What does what you do or make bring to your audience? If you write and a reader doesn’t want to read your piece, they’ll just move on to the next one. If your piece touches them, maybe they’ll read more. Either way, they’ll do the same thing with your bad pieces as a first time reader. People are concerned with what they get out of the process, so if it’s nothing, they tend to just move on.
No one remembers the terrible songs off a one-hit wonder’s album, they remember the hit. If your best effort fails, it will be lost to time. People remember the good more than the bad.
People only care when it’s impactful. If you aren’t hurting them or helping them and aren’t a regular fixture in their lives, you barely exist in their mind, if at all. If you want to be noticed and want people to care, do and produce things worth them caring about.
Liberating Yourself
Once you accept that people really aren’t all that concerned with what you do, you will liberate yourself. Take risks and put yourself out there in ways you normally wouldn’t. Experiment and grow at whatever you want to do. Your failures will be forgotten.
If you really put yourself out there, you may run into people who try to mock or laugh at your efforts. Some people live to feed on the suffering of others. If you react to their cynicism with apathy, what power do they have? You control what you can, and you let them burn themselves out along with their vitriol.
One of the biggest holdups for many people is worrying about what others think. Most people don’t care what you do unless it impacts them, so revel in your newfound freedom. Grow and learn without the fear or worry of what others think.
Featured image by Free-Photos from Pixabay