I

March 29th

WHY DO YOU NEED TO IMPRESS THESE PEOPLE AGAIN?

“If you should ever turn your will to things outside your control in

order to impress someone, be sure that you have wrecked your

whole purpose in life. Be content, then, to be a philosopher in all

that you do, and if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself

first that you are and you will succeed.”

—EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 23

s there anything sadder than the immense lengths we’ll go to impress
someone? The things we’ll do to earn someone’s approval can seem,
when examined in retrospect, like the result of some temporary form of
insanity. Suddenly we’re wearing uncomfortable, ridiculous clothes we’ve
been told are cool, eating differently, talking differently, eagerly waiting for
a call or text. If we did these things because we liked it, that would be one
thing. But that’s not what it is. It’s just a means to an end—to get someone
to give us the nod.
The irony, as Marcus Aurelius points out repeatedly, is that the people
whose opinion we covet are not all that great. They’re flawed—they’re
distracted and wowed by all sorts of silly things themselves. We know this
and yet we don’t want to think about it. To quote Fight Club again, “We buy
things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.”
Doesn’t that sound pretty ridiculous? But more than that, isn’t it about
as far as possible as you can get from the serenity and security that
philosophy can provide?