I try not to worry about what other people think of me. If they tell me, of course, it can be hard to ignore. But if they keep it to themselves, well, what I don't know can't hurt me. Some people dislike the thought of people talking about them behind their back, but I don't care. If they only talk about me when I'm not around, it means they respect me.
What bugs me is when they talk about me in my presence. I remember in school when kids would see me and that would remind them to talk about me! School, like prison, can often be a zero-sum game where you raise your own status by lowering someone else's.
My mother is a different story. She was terrified about what people might say about us! She remembered back in her hometown in Cape Breton between the World Wars, when there was a married man who was overheard talking to his mistress. She was trying to get him to buy her a new coat, and said, "I look terrible in this coat!" He then said, "You look good to me, dear." Word got out, everyone found it funny, and he never heard the end of it! (It all ended badly, of course.)
This made a big impression on my mother. Once advantage of living in a big city is that you don't get talked about as much as in a small town. Or when you do, it's easier to ignore. One superpower I would not want to have is the ability to read people's minds. I don't want to know what everyone thinks of me!
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