We think too much about ourselves. I will be the first to admit that of all the people I know and love in my life, I am perhaps the one most constantly on my mind. Egotistical, I know—but I’m sure you do it too. In doing this, we assume other people are thinking about us as much as we are. Yet this is where the paradox lies, because if everyone is so absorbed with thinking about themselves, then no one is really paying much attention to you.
Still, our ability to make ourselves the centre of our own world is unavoidable because the undeniable truth is that we are. This, in part, is why every little embarrassing mistake we make often feels like the end of the world, because we think it’s not only the end of our world, but everyone else’s too. It’s called the spotlight effect. We place the spotlight on ourselves and ignore next to everything beyond its visual field. But two things happened to me over the course of the last week: I had an unbelievably awkward social interaction, and I had a lovely friend of mine unrelatedly phone me about an awkward situation of her own. And both of these circumstances reminded me that sometimes I need to take a step back out of my spotlight, because standing underneath it for too long can be harsh and draining.
So let’s cut to the chase—I got ghosted. Well, to be more specific, I made someone a playlist and then proceeded to get ghosted. In their defence, it had only been around a week and a half of us getting to know each other. In my defence, they slid into my DMs and initiated the entirety of whatever that was by complimenting my music taste, and proceeding to send me songs for the next few days. But they were avoidant, and I was too intense. Still, whatever happened to some good old communication? A “Hey, um, that’s too much for me, could you reign in the horses a bit?”, rather than a run for the winds. Oh well. Now, for some, a simple ghosting is a masterful form of escape; for others they have to face the fact that they live in Edinburgh and are bound to run into each other again. I ran into them a week later. It was mortifying. I waved, I smiled—I acted as though they hadn’t just been resurrected from the dead. They bowed their head and avoided eye contact. Mortifying.
So that was my ordeal—now for my friend’s. She drunkenly told someone she’d kissed for the first time that she thought they were better than the bees knees. She can’t remember if they reciprocated those feelings. She proceeded to invite them on a weekend away. They aired her. Similar narrative, same old story. So we dissected the situations; we divulged our anxieties to one another and offered advice and reassurance in return. In the midst of our similar stories we found ourselves parroting the same pieces of advice at each other. In doing so, I found myself realising: maybe I am too much, but for the right person, my muchness should mean everything. Both my friend and I are lucky enough to say we have been in love, and have been loved in return, in the past. For those people and the circumstances that led to us being together, our ‘muchness’ was never too much for them. For each other as friends, our muchness is never too much. It’s all about how you frame it.
Sometimes, the end of the world isn’t the end of the world, it’s just another day.
I don’t really think my mortifying encounter of being shunned by someone who ghosted me was embarrassing on my behalf. I think I can say they were equally, if not more, embarrassed by the whole experience, hence the head bowing. Because at the end of the day we’re all giving ourselves too much credit in believing everyone is focused on us, and not enough credit in thinking our mistakes warrant that much attention. What I realised with my friend and I sharing our stories is that we all think our experiences are unique, our mistakes our won—yet somehow there we were telling each stories nor far from our own. We forget the kindnesses we may give out on the daily through not carrying other people’s awkwardnesses home. So maybe at the end of the day the lesson is: a day is a day, we have a whole life to live, this feeling too shall pass.
Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash