Why Can a Stranger Offend Me?

I felt offended by someone I have nothing to do with. I don't know him, he has never said a word to me, and it still stayed in my head. That bothered me more than whatever he did. If he means nothing to me, why is he still there? I started with a bigger question and followed it until it came back to me.

Hate comes first

I started big: why do humans hate other fellow humans? I wanted to understand the large version before my small one. People mostly don't hate someone for being human. They hate what that person stands for, or what they think he will do to them. Fear comes first, and hatred is what the fear turns into.

You can even hate someone you have never met. All it takes is a picture of an enemy, and anyone can hand you that picture. So my feeling about this guy might be the same thing at a smaller size.

There is the other side too. The same people rescue strangers and adopt kids who aren't theirs. Everything depends on who counts as one of us.

It was never about him

Then I asked why some people get jealous of some random dude. If a stranger bothers you, it probably isn't about him. He has something, you want it, and he reminds you that you don't have it. He is just where your mind goes to look at itself.

The other move is easier. Telling yourself he got lucky, or he is fake, takes less effort than asking why it stung.

Envy points at something, though. If I can say exactly what I'm envious of, whether it is money, confidence or freedom, the person stops mattering and I'm left with something I actually want.

Why I keep measuring

Why do we compare like that? Nobody gives you a number for your own worth, so you look at other people to find out where you stand. It is older than any of us.

It isn't about everyone, only people close to you. A billionaire doesn't bother me. Someone my age, in the same field, doing well does, because it feels like a version of me that went further.

Someone else's win also feels like my loss, but someone getting richer doesn't make me poorer. I can't prove the feeling wrong in the moment, but the numbers don't add up.

The same comparison can turn into envy or into ambition. I can hate him because he shows me what I'm missing, or I can ask how he did it.

What I want to try

Then I asked how we can escape from this. I don't think the comparing ever fully stops. What I can change is what I do with it. A few of the answers stood out to me.

1. Notice it and say "I'm comparing" instead of arguing with it.
2. Name exactly what I'm envious of.
3. Remember that his advantage says nothing about my worth.
4. Compare myself with who I was six months ago, not with him.
5. Unfollow the accounts that always leave me feeling behind.
6. Decide what enough looks like for me. Other people's version has no end: ₹10 lakh, then ₹30 lakh, then ₹1 crore, then someone has a private jet.

Why it needs an audience

I asked about the offence and about why humans crave attention in the same breath, because they felt like one thing. When someone ignores me, brushes me off or gets praised, I don't think "who is this guy". Some older part of me hears "he doesn't respect me". For most of history, being pushed down in a group cost people real things, so we are wired to react.

Attention works the same way. It tells you that you matter. You post something, nobody reacts, you check again, and when one notification comes you feel a small lift. It is hard to stop checking.

Attention and recognition are different. A hundred thousand people can look at you and nobody knows you. One person saying "I understand you" can mean more. Maybe the craving isn't "look at me". Maybe it is "see me properly".

I want to keep three things apart: attention, which is people looking at me; validation, which is people approving of me; and self-worth, which is whether I think I'm valuable. I can have the first two and still feel empty, and I can have very little of them and be fine. If I stop treating attention as proof of my worth, a stranger can go back to being a stranger.