Someone said something to me years ago in a casual, offhand way that i carried for much longer than made any sense relative to how quickly they said it. A passing judgment. An assessment delivered without much thought. Forgotten by the person who said it almost immediately, i am certain.
Still sitting with me months later.
That asymmetry between how quickly a thing gets said and how long it can stay is one of the stranger features of how we process opinions about ourselves. And i think most people have experienced some version of it. The thing someone said that landed in a specific gap in your self perception and took up residence there well past any reasonable eviction date.
What i came to understand about that particular comment, after enough time had passed to see it more clearly, was that it said much more about where the person saying it was at than it said anything accurate about me. The sharpness of certain criticisms, the dismissals that feel strangely personal, the offhand judgments that lodge in ways that blunter things do not, they are usually carrying something of the speaker’s own unprocessed material.
You happened to be present when it needed somewhere to go. That does not make you its intended or accurate target.
This is not about dismissing all feedback or deciding criticism is never useful. Honest feedback from people who know you and have your genuine interests in mind is valuable and worth sitting with.
But there is a specific category of opinion that arrives with more charge than its source warrants. Those you do not have to keep.
You are not required to hold onto every assessment of yourself that someone offered in a moment that had very little to do with you.
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