I mean we all have our own frames of reference and when we look at others that are different from us with our own personal opinions in mind, when we try to change them, things get messy.
From the moment you wake up, there’s always a battle waiting for you on the outside and even inside of you.
People will always have something to say. I don’t know if it is the effect of centuries of societal evolution or if it’s just because of our fallen natures but if you’ve lived in this world for long enough you’ll realize that people always want to say something about how you live.
Society seems to have a standard of how you should eat or dress or worship. I am not talking about best practices here, I am talking about people’s individual opinions.
I mean we all have our own frames of reference and when we look at others that are different from us with our own personal opinions in mind, when we try to change them, things get messy.
People will say a lot of things, they will comment on how you dress, how you talk, what you like and some will downright judge you as if they know you.
We all start being content with who we are but sooner or later we find ourselves being super conscious about the statuses you put up or how many, what you look like or whether you’re cool enough because apparently there is some standard as to what is acceptable.
Eventually you change your whole life up so that you can avoid unnecessary comments. You carefully change your life to conform to these so called ideals. Before you know it you’re hiding certain aspects of your life or whole aspects of it just so you can live the way you want to.
But that isn’t living is it? There’s no peace or happiness in such a life is there? I don’t think any of us want to live in a world where we can be anything less than ourselves no matter what that looks like.
I know how all this feels. Like I am only starting to learn to be comfortable with whoever I am now after all these years.
I used to be so worried about so many people opinions, people who never really played a real part in my life, and as a result it broke me to pieces up to the point where I did not know who I was anymore.
People will say a lot of things, they will comment on how you dress, how you talk, what you like and some will downright judge you as if they know you.
But this is what life is you know, we can’t change what people think on our own but we can change what we think about ourselves or rather how we respond to what other people think about us.
I was reading a book written by one of my friends and he says in his book, “When the Golden Goose Doesn’t Lay Eggs” that, “…remember that what people have to say about you does not constitute to anything unless you believe it”. What this mean is that we give power to others to either build us or harm us.
I think what is most profound about all of this is that the art of “I Don’t Care” is biblical.
Having an “I Don’t Care” attitude doesn’t mean that you have to be headstrong and close everybody off and just do you, no, it simply means giving your attention or concern selectively.
In the book of Acts (Acts 4:19), Peter and John are faced with a decision, they could either hear the complaints of the rulers of the people or they could obey God. Even though obeying God was the road less travelled and that the stuff the rulers were saying to them was discouraging they still chose to serve God. They had to learn to not care about the other voices around them and just do what God wanted.
In another chapter Peter goes on to say, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
All this shows us that in order to live a more peaceful life we need to quickly realize that in humanity is a sinful side that makes us impossible to please. So stop wasting your energy trying to make people happy and pray to God for the wisdom to be able to not care about certain things, especially when it comes to people’s opinions.
Trying to please God is a lot easier, it’s just like C.S Lewis says, “God is easy to please but hard to satisfy” (Mere Christianity). He is only hard to satisfy because He wants to restore us to our best but He is always there to lovingly help us. The Bible says that He gives us “the power to will and to do His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
I can’t say that about other people.
That’s all from me folks. Remember to keep it unfiltered.
