Nobody Cares About You (And That’s Okay)
Well, it’s time for another “Ephrom had an argument on the internet that he can’t get out of his head” article. Specifically, the argument I had this time was over the topic of if anyone cares about myself, or anyone else for that matter.
When I argued that most people do not care about me, just as I do not care about most people, this person told me I had depression. For the record, he was in no way a psychologist, and I have spoken about feelings that much closer match depression to actual psychologists — and none have told me that I have depression. (I don’t blame him for not knowing this, and considering he does have depression I will assume he just similarities in our thoughts, but I do want it to be known that he was wrong about this assumption.)
I will not reveal the name of this person, as while I have no issue with telling the names of the people I argue against, this person was arguing with me on a private Discord server and as such revealing his name in a public article would be wrong. However, I do find the fact that he jumped to me having a mental disorder because of this opinion to be something worth talking about.
My basic take was simple, if I died tomorrow the number of people who “cared about me” would be a small minority compared to the 7.674 billion people who live on Earth right now. Considering the number of people who know who I am is under 3.837 billion, it’s safe to say that the people who “care about me” are in a rather small minority. The people who “care about me” are made up of my family and a handful of friends, and basically nobody else — and the people who I care about are my family, a handful of friends, and nobody else.
Yeah, here’s another side to this coin, the major reason I believe most people don’t care about me is because I don’t care about most people. For that matter, I highly doubt that you care about anyone besides a similarly small group of people who live up to the same standards. If you want to tell me you don’t, that you care about people regardless of if they’re friends and family or not, then do yourself a favor and open up the obituaries of a town you have never been to. I promise you that you will not care about the vast majority of the names mentioned, if only because you will have never heard of the vast majority of the names mentioned.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary has five definitions for “care,” but the one most relevant to this conversation is “regard coming from desire or esteem.” You cannot have “desire or esteem” for someone you’ve never met, and you’ve never met most people, just as most people have never met you.
With that said, that does not mean that we can only sympathize or empathize with a small group of people, however, sympathy and empathy are not the same things as caring. For example, when a large number of people donate to the GoFundMe of someone they never met in order for them to get life-saving surgery, they are doing that because they sympathize and empathize with that person. However, if they truly cared about that person, they would not need to sympathize nor empathize with them. Sympathize and empathize means you understand it would be bad if such a thing happened to you, caring about someone means you don’t want it to happen to them.
However, this leads to another important question: Why do people put so much stock in if others “care about them” or not? Shouldn’t we instead be focusing on if the few relationships we have now are solid, and not if some imaginary number of people who “care about” us is high or not?
In truth, basing your worth on if others “care about you” is a fools' errand. People have worth, not because others “care about them,” but because people by default have value. Basing our lives on if others value us is basically putting our life into their hands, which is the complete opposite of independence.
Basically, no, almost nobody cares about you, and that’s okay. Stop worrying about the number of people who care about you, and instead worry about the relationships you do have, as well as being the best person you can be. Base your life on you, not on others.
