2026-01-19
Enemies are rare, most people don't care about you
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- Important: A lot of this post below is context-specific, and I haven't fully specified the context. If your context is very different from me, it's possible this post doesn't apply to you.
- TW - rape
I went through atleast one phase of my life involving unnecessary amounts of distrust in people at large. In order to protect privacy of some people, I can't talk much about the actual series of events on the public internet. I do think I learned one fairly general lesson about life as a result. It's possible this being written down also helps someone else, hence I am writing it.
One cluster of things that was helpful for me to learn:
- Most people don't really care about you. They care primarily about themselves.
- You can just disappear and distance yourself whenever you want.
- If you told everyone around you that you plan to disappear from the face of the earth, but return after a month, or 3 months, or a year, most people genuinely won't care. They might care (or pretend to care) at first, but after a month or two they'll probably forget about it.
- If you died tomorrow, most people will forget about you within the first month or first few months after your funeral.
- Very few people become enemies who dedicate significant amounts of their time to hurt you. Most people don't have much to gain by doing this, and plenty to lose.
- "how much they have to gain" is context-specific. I say this as a random young upper-middle class male adult in India with basic skills in protecting my physical safety and belongings and so on. I can imagine this being different if you are prisoner. Or a billionaire heir. Or a woman. etc.
- There are people willing to take advantage of you in opportunistic short-term ways. For example people who will rob your money (if you're careless about money), or people who will rape you (if you're careless about safety). I'm saying it is rare to find people willing to hurt you by making a plan and executing it over a long period of time.
- Spite and revenge are not great long-term motivators. Someone will likely seek revenge against you over the long-term, only if they think you have significantly hurt them first.
- Being disagreeable doesn't usually make you people's enemy. Being mean in your words doesn't usually make you people's enemy. In such situations, most people will just distance themselves from you, and not think much about it a few months later.
- A few people might really care about you, but these people might be rarer than you think.
Subscribe
Enter email or phone number to subscribe. You will receive atmost one update per month
Comment
Enter comment