We’ve all been there. The heated huddle near the coffee machine, the flurry of text messages dissecting someone’s choices, the whispered summary of their latest failure over dinner. In those moments, the person we’re talking about feels incredibly present, a central character in our private drama. We animate them with our words, painting their intentions, judging their path, and solidifying their role as the villain or the fool in our personal narrative. It feels significant, this dissection. It must matter.
But here is the quiet, unglamorous truth: a lot of the time, the person you’re talking about barely knows you exist, if at all.Think about your own world. You move through your days carrying your own weights: a looming deadline, a strained friendship, a nagging worry about your health or your family. In the background of your life, there are extras—the face you see in the hallway but can’t name, the vague acquaintance from years ago, the coworker from another department who is just a blur of noise and color in the periphery of your real concerns. Now, consider this: you are that extra in countless other people’s stories.
The energy you expend analyzing their haircut, their relationship, their career misstep, or their social media post is, for them, often a form of energy that was never spent. While you’re weaving a complex tapestry of their flaws, they are simply living, largely unconcerned with your opinion or your narrative. Your sharp critique is not a dart hitting its target; it’s an echo in a room they left long ago.
This isn’t to say gossip doesn’t cause real hurt—it certainly can when it reaches its subject or damages reputations within a shared circle. But so much of our “talking shit” operates in a vacuum. It’s a closed-loop system of our own making. We grant someone a starring role in our minds, believing our chatter somehow balances a cosmic scale or elevates our own position. In reality, we are often actors on a stage, performing a passionate monologue to an empty seat. The person we’ve cast as our antagonist isn’t even in the theater.
There’s a peculiar loneliness in this realization, but also a profound freedom. The loneliness comes from admitting that our bitter obsession is often a solo activity, a shadowboxing match where we swing at air. The freedom, however, is immense. It means you can put down the weight. You can stop renting space in your own head to someone who isn’t paying attention. All that mental real estate you’ve been leasing out—the corners of your mind filled with their imagined slights and perceived inadequacies—can be reclaimed for you.
When you find yourself about to dive into that familiar, juicy critique, pause. Ask yourself a simple, grounding question: “In the landscape of their life, what am I?” The likely answer is not a towering monument of influence, but a fleeting shadow, if a shadow at all. That realization isn’t meant to diminish you; it’s meant to liberate you from a pointless game.
Redirect that energy. The focus you give to someone who doesn’t think of you is focus stolen from your own path, your own peace, your own people who truly do care that you exist. The echo eventually fades, leaving only the person who first made the sound still listening. Make sure what you’re hearing, and what you’re putting out into the world, is worth your own time. Because, in the end, you are the one who has to live with the noise.
