Let me tell you something that is really getting on my last nerve.

Friday I watched a little of Kitchen Nightmares. Yes, sometimes I get hooked on reality shows and at the moment, cooking shows like this and Bar Rescue have a hold on me. On Kitchen Nightmares they revisited the crazy couple in Scottsdale AZ that Gordon Ramsey walked away from. They had been in the local news so much I recognized them off the bat, and I knew a little bit about their crazy ways, but I wasn’t prepared for the bat crap craziness this couple was all about.

I could only take a half hour of their hot mess because they kept presenting a position I am growing sick of. They kept talking about how they were going to prove to the world they were better people than were represented in the show. They were going to stand up to the haters. They were upset with the comments people left on Yelp, Facebook and other social media sites. I have grown very tired of people assuming their worth in life is based on what is written in social media. Now, I get wanting to have a good representation on social media sites, but how is it so many people are so narcissistic that they assume the whole world cares about their reputation?

Maybe I started noticing this when social media started exploding, but it annoys me when I hear people talk in such grand terms about themselves or others. When I hear a term like ‘everyone is talking about x’ I know the person is trying to justify spending so much time on a minor subject. I would say in a majority of cases, not everyone is talking about whatever they feel is so important. By saying that phrase a lot there is an accumulation that builds up and a viral effect takes place. The thing is, that whole thing about everyone talking about something normally occurs with trivial things. I don’t see everyone talking about Crimea, the World Bank or even the widening wealth gap. Before anyone says yes they are talked about, think about how many discussions have been done on Kim Kardashian. People will say they don’t care about her but will know an uncomfortable amount of information about her. The grist of many late night comedy routines is getting a camera in front of average people and asking them world event questions or making up false world event stories. The average person, if we are to believe the comedy skits, can’t name the vice president, couldn’t tell you anything about Crimea or doesn’t know the ACA and Obamacare are the exact thing.

I hate to break it to a lot of people but we are not important to the world at large. By we I mean us, the little lives we live every day that we think are so important to people at large. The world doesn’t care what you have to prove. To paraphrase a really good science fiction book, the world is a harsh mistress. A mistress is a good roll in the hay, maybe a good shoulder to cry on, but at the end of the day the mistress isn’t important enough to leave your wife over. When we start thinking in terms that the world cares about what we do, or we have to prove something to the world, we set ourselves up for failure because the world has a set opinion about us. The opinion is it doesn’t give a damn.

The truth is we try to use external situations to justify our personal actions. When we screw up we look for validation externally. Most of us don’t look inward for validation and we don’t accept we can make honest mistakes. We seek out ‘truth’ from other people and in some cases want to make sure others validate our beliefs. In all honesty, if we didn’t care what the world thought about us we would go along our merry way without shouting from the rooftops. I think it would be fair to say that if you see a minister on TV preaching the about the good book, there would be some who might be skeptical of their motives. If you saw a celebrity on TV touting a new exercise machine, the first thing many might do is wonder what other factors contributed to their weight loss, like a personal trainer or chef. When you see the person on TV talking about flipping homes for thousands of dollars, skepticism creeps in as to how they made their money.

Most people don’t follow folks like that, or at least there is a pause in following them blindly. We instinctively don’t trust them, however if they are constantly talked about, sooner or later more will come to regard them as important. Last year there was a court case in town. It wasn’t even much of a story in the local press in the beginning. As time went on, the story became bigger because ‘people’ said it was an interesting story. By the summer it was a story so big it got national attention. By the time the Jodi Arias trial got to the jury phase, it was a national phenomenon. If you can recall back to that time, there were people who traveled from other states to watch the trial. There were trial groupies who camped out to get a seat at the trial. Many of them got face time from local and national news outlets.

Now, step back for a moment. What impact did the Jodi Arias trial have on you? How much did it have an impact on trial watchers or those who became obsessed with it? None. OK, maybe because of face time some people got to brag about being in the news but can you name one of those people? Can you name the judge in the case, or the defense attorney? It was considered an important trail yet an average person probably would have time recalling the trail itself. Compare that to the OJ Simpson trail, where I would bet if you ask someone on the street they would know some of the attorneys on both sides of the case, and with a little prodding could even tell you who the victims were. If the people on Kitchen Nightmare could somehow ‘prove to the world’ they weren’t crazy, what impact would that have on their lives? How would it impact your life? See, the people they need to make peace with is themselves. If the Kitchen Nightmare people constantly worry about what the world thinks about them, they will never be satisfied. There will always be people who hate them, no matter what. There will be people who don’t care about their situation, so trying to win them over is a waste of time. Their lives are too trivial to care about.

Like it or not, most of our lives are too trivial to care about so worrying about what the world thinks is a waste of time. Many years ago I met two amazing women. At the time I didn’t know they were very devout Christian women. They said they preached their faith by doing. They tried to model their lives as they thought Jesus would do and if asked they would talk about their beliefs, but for the most part they did their work by deeds. In talking to them I realized they could live in the ‘secular’ world because they had found peace within themselves. They didn’t condemn anyone for their beliefs because they felt people had to find within themselves their path to God. Every experience was different and the path that might be good for one person might not be the right path for someone else, in their words.

We have to stop worrying about what ‘the world’ thinks because the world doesn’t matter. The world doesn’t care about our trivial little lives. The only person that is going to care about our lives is us. We have to care enough about ourselves to fight for ourselves. That doesn’t mean demanding respect from someone, it doesn’t mean shouting down people, it doesn’t mean being arrogant to people. We have to be confidant within ourselves and hold our head up high.