You send the message and they don’t reply. A day passes, maybe two.
And your mind gets to work. Maybe they’re annoyed.
Maybe it came out wrong. Maybe they’re rethinking the whole thing.
Here’s what’s almost always true instead: they weren’t thinking about you at all.
They were thinking about themselves – their deadlines, their kids, their own version of the noise you’re carrying right now.
Nobody is thinking about you as much as you think they are.
I remind myself of this all the time. My busy life is just my version of everyone else’s busy life. The mental space I imagine people are reserving for me? It mostly isn’t there. They’re too busy being the main character in their own story.
So why do we build whole theaters in our heads? We have a full imaginary audience watching what we said, what we posted, what we didn’t do.
I caught myself doing it a few days ago, standing in the sea at midday, ready for my game of picigin, as I started replaying a conversation the other person had probably already forgotten.
I had to snap out of it because it’s a trap. You come back to the moment, back to presence, and the audience disappears because it was never really there.
So maybe this week the invitation is simple.
Think less about what they think.
Come back to what’s actually in front of you.
This Week’s Cue to Pause
Presence breaks the illusion of the imaginary audience.
