Do I Care if They Think I'm Weird?

How not to build regrets

Avocet: crayon rubbing

With wax crayon in hand and paper flapping in the wind, I took a rubbing from the embossed plate of an avocet. There is something pleasing about a rubbing: how the picture appears like magic. And I like the visual effect. The activity had been designed to occupy children and teach them about the inhabitants of the nature reserve. But I'd decided to have a go, for the fun of it. It was the first warm, sunny Sunday of the year. Joy! A favourite spot for birders and families, Rye Harbour was heaving. Strolling walkers were looking over, curious. Why was an older woman busy with this children's pastime?

"Do they think I'm weird?" I wondered. Then: "do I care if they think I'm weird?" I would love to be free from such cares! Determined not to be put off, I went on to collect the skylark, crayfish and a bunch of other species. Satisfying.

Working in palliative care, Bronnie Ware developed close relationships with dying people. Her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying shares the most common regret she heard:

"I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

When I was younger, I worried a lot about what other people thought about me. I wanted others to see me in a particular way: as an intelligent, attractive and successful person. I did not want them to see me as childish or silly. As I matured, I began to see through this craving for approval. It had a dampening effect on spontaneity and joie de vivre. And acting to please others did not tend to pan out well. Not for me, because I was not being honest, but neither for the people around me. Trying to predict what others want is not easy and I would often end up pleasing no-one.

I do not crave approval now as I did in my twenties. Yet something of that same motivation lingers, off the radar. Collecting those rubbings in full sight of the day-trippers was a small strike for freedom. It required me to ignore fears that people would think me childish or odd.

I once read that one should cultivate being eccentric: much more appealing than being odd! To be eccentric has a flavour of creativity; individuality. It suggests daring to be different.

A couple of weeks later, I was on a Mindful Self-Compassion training retreat. We were having breakfast in silence, with a delicious array of options. I had taken a couple of grilled haloumi slices alongside a slice of toast and marmalade. I like cheese and marmalade together and I was about to combine the two ingredients onto my toast. Then I hesitated. Would the others at my table judge me as weird? Or, somehow, greedy? I recognised the thought as a micro-moment of the same fear that had popped up at Rye Harbour. And countless other times in my life. I ignored it and went ahead with my chosen combination. As I did so, the person who had been sitting next to me arrived back at the table. I smiled. She had gone back to the servery to get a blob of marmalade to have with her haloumi. So much for me being weird - or even different!

These experiences with rubbings and haloumi & marmalade are tiny examples. But many small moments of feeling restricted add up to a deeper thread of constraint. A personality trait quietly eroding a sense of freedom to be oneself.

In addition to the sadness of not being true to oneself, Ware goes on to list the next three three common regrets:

• "I wish I hadn't worked so hard."

• "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."

• "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends."

The last of her 'top five' is: "I wish that I had let myself be happier." For some, that includes being sillier. Ware points out that being happy is a choice:

"When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying. Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness."

Artwork by the Author with Chris Garland