It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.
Today that topic is…
Explain a valuable life lesson you learned in 2025.
No one cares.
Hold up. Wait. Listen. Whoa: I don’t mean that in a sad-sack, pity me kind of way.
What I mean is that figuring out some perspective on the attention of others is actually, factually something that has taken me decades to put into a simple clear idea and to internalize, nearly half a century of work to break out of the patterns of my youth, and to materialize in my own mind a thought that—tho rational and clear and obvious—will still be something that it will still take me the rest of my life to ever feel comfortable settling into as a firm belief that I live by without constantly reminding myself, really: it is figuring out that no one really actually cares…
No one is looking.
No one is actually paying attention.
No one is paying as much attention to you as you are.
No one is concerned about the choices you make (inasmuch as long as those choices don’t get in their way and cause them harm or cost them money or whatever.)
People will judge, sure. People might gossip, of course. But at the end of the day no one really actually cares enough to even think much about those things let alone put in the effort to try to stop each of us from doing and being the things we want to be.
That can have a net negative result if people get lost down rabbit holes of weird or dangerous pursuits, sure, but the upside is that IF no one actually cares, then hell… we can all be pretty much free to create what we want to create, to draw the thing we want to draw and to sing the songs we want to sing. Anything. No one cares.
People will pay attention, glance in our direction, leave comments, maybe even talk behind our backs, possibly orbit in our lives for a time and disrupt each of our effort to be our true selves, but no one ACTUALLY cares… at least not as much as we each think everyone does, and not with anything comparable in scale to the focus each of us puts upon our own lives.
I spent a lot of years hesitating to make or do or say because I was brought up to think that the nattering of external commentary on the things I chose was as valuable—if not of vastly greater value—than the value I put on it for myself. But that’s not true at all.
The reality is that unless someone has a weird sort of toxic obsession with us, which is probably way more rare than most people assume, the average person out there doesn’t really give a spit about any other average person… or us.
Our coworkers acknowledge our value. Our friends may even like us. Our family possibly loves us. Whatever. But…
No. One. Cares.
Not what you choose to do and not who you choose to be.
(And anyone who might care a bit too much isn’t worth listening to actually… so in my experience they don’t f-ing count. Micromanaging bosses. Overbearing partners. Terrible governments. Fuck em all. )
The point being is that it is easy to get hung up wondering what people will think or say or how they will react to a job change or a life choice or the colour of your new car or the fact you stopped at the drive thru for a hamburger after work… but no one cares.
It’s easy to assume that if you spend your evenings pursuing a hobby that you love or learn a second language or study something wild in school or write weird niche fiction online under a quirky pen name that everyone is out there is just judging and talking and wagging their fingers… but actually: no one cares.
No one cares.
No. One. Cares.
And that’s a good thing. It is freeing. It leaves us to pursue being the people who we want to be.
A lesson worth caring about. At least little.
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