Finding Joy When Life Is Being Kind of Rude

One time, about 20 years ago, I was watching a hilarious South Park episode with a 12-year-old kid (I’m not naming names, but he lived in our house…hint, hint). We were both chilling and laughing hysterically when he got a phone call from a girl he went to school with.

After they hung up, he looked disappointed. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I sounded like a dork,” he admitted, after some prodding. “That didn’t go well.”

“Oh no no.” I said. “That’s not it.”

I paused the TV and told him something I learned while navigating adult friendships, something I still occasionally forget, and something I’ve seen so many times that I’ve come to understand it at a deeper level.

People are usually just worrying about themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never come home after a gathering and lay awake in the wee hours pondering how someone else came across. Not once have I interacted with someone and agonized over how cringey and uncomfortable they seemed. And I have yet to end a phone call and fret about how the person on the other end was too quiet, too chatty, or too loud because I was too busy worrying about myself and my own dumbass behavior.

We’re human. We’re all trying, and we all worry about stupid stuff. We’re all harder on ourselves than anyone else has ever been or ever will be. The great Eleanor Roosevelt said it best, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

Once you realize that everyone else is so busy analyzing themselves, and hardly anyone worth thinking about is analyzing you, you can keep on being kind, compassionate, generous, loving, creative, and whatever else you want to be. And most importantly, unburdened by other people’s opinions. You will be free.

And that, my friends, is how you really find joy.

PS -There will always be a few shitty people who will judge, whisper, nitpick, stick pins in your imaginary voodoo doll, and act like your choices and quirks are their business. Why? Who knows. Maybe because Mercury is in retrograde, or maybe because they’re just a$$holes. Let them talk and gnash their teeth. Consider them mildly frustrating and then fughettabout ‘em as you keep living, laughing, and being you. XOXO