How freeing oneself from the imagined judgements and expectations from others can be a comfort and lead to a more sincere life
No one is watching you. This statement may seem contradictory in a society where we feel constantly surveilled. Everyone has a Ring doorbell these days; security cameras are everywhere and social media use is constant. You never know when you’ll end up being filmed. Many of us crave an audience and try to seek one out ourselves. You would be hard-pressed to find a young person today who doesn’t have an Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter account, sharing their curated life through pictures, videos and text with loved ones and strangers alike. We are always performing, but is anyone really watching?
This is to say that most people are generally focused on themselves. What they look like, what they spend their days and lives doing and how other people perceive them. Even on social media, when you are the one being watched. Even on the accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and views. What people are really seeing, most of the time, is not the subject. It’s themselves. Or, more accurately, what they could be. That’s why these people performing for us are called influencers. The people who follow the man taking a gap year to solo travel, for the most part, don’t see him; they see their desire to do the same. To have the same gumption, to own the same clothes, to be able to afford the same plane ticket. Even if you’re watching someone with a lifestyle you don’t wish to emulate, you still (most likely) aren’t really watching them. You may watch the woman in her 20s with half a dozen kids and think to yourself how lucky you are that it isn’t you with all of that responsibility.
This realization, that no one is really watching, can be a sort of freedom. A cause of anxiety for many people is the assumption that people are watching their every move, and that their every move is somehow “wrong.” The best way to relieve oneself of this fear is to acknowledge one’s own (relative) unimportance. So you spilled ketchup on your shirt at lunchtime. So you failed chemistry for the second time. Nobody is (really) laughing at you. Nobody is relishing in your defeat. This allows you the space to live your own life, free from the imagined judgment of others.
The downside of this is that, after childhood, we are (for the most part) solely responsible for ourselves. This means that nobody is watching you. You have the freedom to live life how you choose, and the responsibility to live life as best you can without someone supervising and guiding your every move. Very little should be embarrassing. No one is watching you just to wait for you to fail, for you to fall down as you exit the bus. No one is watching you to ensure you actually fulfill that New Year’s resolution you swore you would do. Your life is yours. One must find their own source of positive self-motivation, a reason to do good. This is not to say that we go through life alone. Of course, there are people to love and nurture us along the way. But the onus remains on us alone to create the lives we dream of.