Life Is Too Short to Spend It Worrying About What People Think
Life is too short to spend it worrying about what other people think. Yet, for most of my life, that is exactly what I have done.
When you grow up surviving difficult circumstances, when the people who are supposed to love and protect you make you feel that you are too much; too energetic, too loud, too emotional, too anxious, not serious enough; you learn to scan faces. You become an expert at reading moods, searching for danger, trying to anticipate rejection before it arrives.
It leaves its mark.
I am an openhearted person. I laugh loudly. I care deeply. I have an offbeat sense of humor and sometimes speak before I think. I am quirky, imperfect, and unapologetically human.
What I have endured in my forty-eight years would have broken many people. Childhood abuse. The unraveling of a long marriage. Heartbreak. Disappointment. Reinvention. Somehow, I am still standing.
I am resilient.
I am strong.
Yet there is something about myself that I have never fully understood.
I am drawn to people who are a closed book.
The quiet ones. The unreadable ones. The people whose expressions reveal nothing. If someone smiles easily, I simply enjoy their company. But if someone wears a permanent scowl, my mind gets to work.
What did I do?
Why do they seem unhappy when they see me?
Do they dislike me?
I become consumed with solving a mystery that may not even exist.
The truth is, I may never know what lies behind another person’s expression. Maybe they are deep in thought. Maybe they are carrying burdens I know nothing about. Maybe they are simply reserved. Or maybe they genuinely don’t like me.
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The hardest lesson has been realizing that I don’t need the answer.
Not everyone will understand me.
Not everyone will appreciate my personality.
Not everyone will laugh at my jokes.
And that is okay.
For so many years, I believed my worth was somehow tied to how other people saw me. I thought if someone seemed distant or disapproving, I had done something wrong. But healing has taught me something different.
Another person’s opinion of me is not a measure of my value.
I have survived far greater things than a stranger’s scowl.
Perhaps the better question was never, “Why don’t they like me?”
Perhaps it was, “Why do I need everyone to?”
The answer is rooted in a lifetime of trying to earn love, acceptance, and safety.
But I don’t have to keep doing that.
Maybe the real lesson isn’t learning why some people seem distant.
Maybe the lesson is learning that I can let them be.
And, at long last, let myself be.
Because life is simply too short to spend it worrying about what other people think.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
