Maybe We Should Care What People Think.

When I was younger, I wore not caring like a badge of honour. It felt radical. It felt like freedom. “I don’t care what people think,” I would say, loud and proud, sometimes with a smirk and other times with an edge of defiance. It was something the world taught me to say, especially as a woman growing up in a society that demanded so much performance of us. Don’t laugh too loudly. Don’t sit that way. Don’t speak your mind so freely. Don’t write about that. And always, always remember: “What will people say?”

At some point, the only response that felt empowering was to throw it all back. To not care. To act as though I were immune to the gazes, the whispers, the expectations.

But now, in my twenties, a little more certain of who I am and also a little more aware of who I am not, I’ve started to rethink that stance. I’ve begun to wonder whether that popular wisdom that people’s opinions don’t matter is just another form of denial. Whether, in trying so hard to be unaffected, we miss something essential about what it means to live in community. Whether, in shielding ourselves from judgment, we also shield ourselves from responsibility, from connection, from the beauty that comes with being seen, even if imperfectly.

Because what people think does matter. Not always. Not absolutely. But often enough that it shapes how we move through the world. How we tell stories. How we imagine ourselves.

What people think influences whether a girl speaks up in class or stays quiet. It affects how a boy learns to process emotion or suppress it until it hardens into something dangerous. It determines whether someone is welcomed into a space or quietly excluded. Sometimes what people think determines whether a life is mourned or merely judged.

I understand, of course, why so many of us recoil from the idea of caring. We live in a time where the gaze of others feels unrelenting. Where social media has turned us all into performers, crafting identities for public consumption, judged not by integrity but by algorithms. “Curate your life,” they say. “Be unapologetically yourself,” they also say. And so we live in contradiction, desperately trying to be authentic while hoping the crowd will applaud our authenticity.

In that chaos, not caring feels like a lifeline. But perhaps that’s the problem. Not caring becomes a defense mechanism. A shield. A way to survive in a world that often demands too much of our souls.

But there is a kind of care that is not about validation. Not about approval. Not about applause. There is a kind of care that is rooted in accountability. In mutual respect. In the quiet understanding that we live among people, and that our words and actions have consequences beyond ourselves.

I care what people think when I write, not because I’m trying to be liked, but because I believe writing is an act of reaching out. A letter to the world. A way of saying: I see you, do you see me too? I care what people think because I want to challenge them, maybe even change them. And I know that can only happen if I understand them, if I think about how my words will land in their world.

I care what people think when I represent something larger than myself. As a woman. As a Nigerian. As a Muslim. As a northerner. Not because I want to be the perfect poster girl, but because I know that visibility can be a form of advocacy. That sometimes, by simply existing loudly and truthfully, you push the boundary of what’s possible for someone else.

And no, I don’t think we should live our lives tethered to the judgments of others. But neither do I think we should delude ourselves into believing we exist in a vacuum. We are social creatures. We build culture through what we affirm and what we challenge. Through the stories we tell and the silences we maintain.

So I no longer say, “Don’t care what people think.” Instead, I ask: Which people? Why do they think that? What do I lose or gain by listening?

Because some opinions are noise. Others are warnings. Some are rooted in love, others in fear. Some we discard. Others we carry because they remind us of the kind of people we want to be.

The goal, perhaps, is not to stop caring altogether, but to care with intention. To care in a way that doesn’t crush you. To care in a way that connects you. To care, not to conform, but to understand.

Because in the end, our lives do not exist in isolation. We are part of a shared narrative, whether we like it or not. And maybe, just maybe, it is okay to care what people think, if only to be thoughtful about how we move through that narrative. If only to be a little more human.