I'm trying to stop thinking about what other people will think

By Sehjal Kumar

I’m trying to stop thinking about what other people will think.

Every time I think I’ve made progress I’ll end up spending time or money, or worse; both to do something to impress/pacify/prove myself to other people.

I won’t realise it immediately - in my mind the first (second and third) line of reasoning is always ‘it’s the right thing to do’. because as an Asian person we taught from the day we are born to perform for others. It is drilled into our heads until the thought becomes our own.

But after I’ve spent a few hours and/or several pounds it becomes clear that I am wasting resources I have precious little of in the vague hope that it will be appreciated by others.

But it won’t be.

That’s not defeatist, it’s reality. Whatever we do, someone will find it lacking and others simply won’t notice because they will be so lost to the thoughts in their own minds, to the people they are trying to impress/pacify/prove themselves to.

It’s a futile game.

So I wonder where it comes from. Aside from our deep biological need for human connection that forces us to perform, the Asian obsession with perception actually seems to be a byproduct of colonialism, just like the obsession with fair skin. Although the British didn’t invent keeping up appearances, they could certainly trademark it.

With both (fair skin and keeping up appearances), they would not have taken so strong a hold in Asian culture if there wasn't already a precedent for it. History shows us that there was.

We have always performed perfection. It is quietly threaded through the rituals and rules we were raised on. In the way girls are told not just to be good, but to look good doing it. In the way our mothers straightened their backs and smiled politely through community whispers. In the way a biodata opens with “fair, slim, convent-educated” as if those words alone guarantee love.

Keeping up appearances wasn’t just encouraged — it was survival. Family honour, or izzat, could be shattered by a single rumour, a loud laugh, a personal truth. And so many of our women — maybe even our grandmothers — learned to be silent, to hold pain close like a secret, because anything else would be considered shameful.

Even during Partition, people stitched up their grief and carried on, because to dwell on suffering was to seem weak. That’s the legacy we’ve inherited: strength mistaken for silence. Poise mistaken for peace.

And so I mask my high functioning anxiety, failing familial relationships and buy that pretty dress.

Because otherwise, “what will people think?”