Yes, You Should Care What Others Think

“I don’t care what anyone thinks of me,” she proudly proclaimed. The boldness associated with the statement conjures images of a punk band defying tyranny in an oppressed land, but in our own culture the phrase has become so common it is more likely to be uttered when choosing a pair of shoes. Like all modern philosophy, it is a phrase that was doomed to eventually lose all its gravitas. As it becomes common to everyone it becomes meaningful to no one.

Its lack of meaning is precisely why so many people who can’t possibly mean it continue to say it with great frequency. You see, of all the problems in our age, human nature remains the same. When asked if they desire marriage and children, most millennials will respond that they do “eventually,” as if “eventually” were some far off distant and ideal land that is natural to admire and perhaps visit one day.

So long as we crave relationships and love, and so long as we love others on any level at all, we will actually care very deeply what they think about us. If we truly care about others we cannot avoid caring about their thoughts and feelings. To do otherwise would be to only care for their material needs, but what is love and friendship but a connection at a much deeper level? When a man acts in manner that neglects or harms his wife’s feelings and thoughts we call him a cad. He may provide for her every material need, but if he fails to care for her emotions, and is selfishly unwilling to live his life for her, then he cannot be said to love her in any sense of term.

Heaven forbid this cliché ever come out of its cage and truly dictate the actions of mankind. Fortunately, anyone who claims to not care about the thoughts of others is either a liar or the miserable sort of friendless person nobody would desire to emulate.

Chesterton once said of St. Francis that “He never despised his fellow creatures and therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures.” In an age of meaningless clichés and empty defiance, do the truly bold thing and care about what others think of you. Love, after all, is coming to acknowledge that something outside the self is real and deserving of our devotion in thought, word, and deed.