I have this problem where I seem to think I'm the center of the universe. And not in the "Oh my gosh everyone serve me" sort of way that reminds you of Veruca Salt when she's all "I want the world" and singing with the chocolate egg-laying geese, but in a "everyone actually cares what I think and do and it's really important to them" sort of way.
To be honest I think we all sort of struggle with that, just as our human default. We always think of pride as the top looking down, but more often than not I think people struggle with the bottom looking up.
We all do this. We spend 5 minutes trying to cover up that one stubborn pimple like we actually think people are really going to notice. And yeah, I'm sure people occasionally do, but really the problem is that we believe people look at us in the same way we look at ourselves - overly critical, aware of every blemish and flaw. I mean, next time you're talking to a friend take a look at their face and you might be surprised to see that they have pimples too. We just never notice them because we're too focused on ourselves.
As for this whole bottom looking up thing, I think we classify others as being at the top and then we think they're all haughty and too good for us just because maybe they don't worship our every witty comment. We just get all confused and mixed up in our perceptions of others. I was especially good at this in high school when I would see someone who I had raised up on some absurd pedestal and then they didn't really talk to me and I automatically believed they were prideful themselves. And that was prideful on my part.
I've come to believe thinking others hate you is one of the most selfish things ever. I mean, to assume that they even focus on you enough to think "yeah I really hate that girl and that's why I glare at her every day and don't speak to her even though she's never done anything to upset me" is laughable. Sure, there are circumstances where there's actual ill feelings, but more often than not they don't really care about you. Think about it - how many people do you actually, really, truly hate? Probably very few, if any at all (and hate, that's just a really dumb thing I won't even get into right now but just don't do it). You don't really notice that many people, do you? Because you're so concerned with other people noticing you? It's like stake dances when everyone is looking around all self-conscious because there's gotta be someone staring at you and thinking how ridiculous you look but really no one is because they're all busy looking around all self-conscious because there's gotta be someone staring at them thinking how ridiculous they look. It's this vicious cycle, and the people that have the best times at dances realize no one is actually looking at them and they just dance. And if someone is looking at you and judging, who cares? It's not your problem because you're enjoying yourself, aren't you?
There have been quite a few times in my life when people have told me they used to think I hated them or was mean because guess what? My default face looks angry. So a casual walk through the hall for me that meant nothing more than I was thinking about nothing or thinking hard about something and whatever I was thinking it wasn't what my face looked like meant "oh my gosh Anna never talks to me and look she just glared at me as she walked past" for someone else. I mean, how many times had I been in the latter situation myself? I totally got it. But I guess I just never realized others might be thinking the same things about me that I thought of others. I never realized because I was too busy focusing on my own "sad" situation.
I blame part of this selfishness on our world today (maybe all of it). I mean, we have all these social networking sites that encourage us to focus on ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I love these sites. I'm the first to admit I really enjoy facebook and twitter and instagram and all that stuff. I mean, hi, I have a blog. A blog all about me. But these sites are ones that are all, "What are you thinking about?" "What are you doing?" "What are you eating, do you want to post a picture about it? Because everyone genuinely cares what you ate for lunch." Spoiler! They don't.
Years ago we didn't have these and I'd say people were a lot better at not focusing on themselves. But now it's almost expected that you focus on yourself. The world encourages us to go out and discover who we really are and find our identity and be confident with yourself. And while all those things are important, I think people have confused confidence and healthy self-esteem with selfishness and pride. Human seem to be addicted to masochistic behavior. Here's a thought - maybe if we stopped being so selfish and wallowing in our own self pity and went out and helped someone else, we'd be better off in our identity. The more of yourself you spread around, the more there is to find.
All this was brought on because I realized I have a problem where I second guess everything I do because I worry what people will think of me. And while it's important to be socially acceptable, people don't really care what I do. They're too busy caring about themselves.
"We just never notice them because we're too focused on ourselves." I have one correction on this blog post. Mostly everything you said is true and I agree with it but I think we don't notice these things because we just see the good in other people. We don't see their flaws and their pimples and the bad things they say. We forgive easily and we forget. We see people as they are, really truly trying and we forget the silly stuff. Now, when we look at ourselves we don't like what we see. We compare, we degrade and we are critical. We don't love ourselves as we love others. So when we are looking at others we really aren't judging, we just think people judge us because we don't love ourselves.
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