No One Cares About You Quite Like You

Have you ever been around a bunch of people thinking to yourself, be cool, look good, don’t say anything stupid? In other words, have you ever been around a bunch of people yet thinking almost completely about yourself? I hope you didn’t answer no to that question, because if you did, you are frankly a delusional liar =) . The fact is, we all often think like this. And since we all often think like this, this kind of thinking is basically pointless. In general, people are too busy thinking about what you think of them to ever really think about what they think of you.

Mostly the only people busy thinking about you are the people identified with you. They are thinking about you because they think of you as reflective upon themselves. Consequently, the parent is concerned about the child, the spouse is concerned about the spouse, the girl who wants to be the girlfriend of a certain guy is concerned with the guy, the friend is concerned about the friend, the woman insecure with her own body is concerned about the stranger with the freakishly small nose, the repressed thief is worried about stopping thieves, and so on. It is self-concern by way of identification with another: concern through association and psychological projection.

No one cares about you quite like you care about you. And that is because, truthfully, you don’t quite care about anyone quite like you care about you. In other words, other people are just like you…or more accurately, they are you. There are no other people out there separate from your own subjective thoughts about them. The sooner you realize that, the better. The only reason we ever think people are different from us is because people and circumstances are liars and we often foolishly believe them. The masks of ego people put on to face the world are a lie that merely emphasizes an illusory difference to those willing to believe and facilitate the lie.

Although finding people willing to get honest is a rarity, every person I’ve ever known that was willing to get honest has proven to be just like me. The surface masks are distracting at first, but if you can get to the core of the matter with brutal honesty, you find that we are all the same. At the core, we are all subject to taking bad orders from the same inner idiot (the ego, who fearfully emphasizes separation), or good orders from the same inner genius (our higher self who lovingly emphasizes togetherness and wholeness). That is why you should always be nice to people. No matter what kind of stubborn, undesirable jerk a person seems to be on the surface, that person is still you at the core. Hence the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To forgive another for a perceived error is to forgive yourself.

And so the moral of this article is this: To the extent a person lacks an understanding of other people, that person lacks an understanding of her or his self. Such is the consequence of misperception. That is why it is important to start by understanding that no one cares about you quite like you care about you. When you realize that about you, you’ll realize that about others. When you realize that about others, you’ll be able to better see past the surface differences and so build empathetic understanding by seeing that all you ever see in others is yourself.

As you see and do unto others, you see and do unto yourself. To revel in one’s own unique, individual, and separate self is to revel in what is a fictional prison. You and I are we, and to realize that makes one free.

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