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Someone said something to you once — maybe years ago, maybe last month — and it stayed. Not a dramatic insult. Something smaller. A remark. An opinion delivered casually, a judgement offered without invitation. An observation made in passing that somehow decided to live in your chest permanently. You have continued to carry it, replaying it on certain evenings and allowing it to shape your self-perception.
We absorb words before we weigh them. Someone says something, and it enters — as hurt, as doubt, as a question about ourselves — before we have paused to ask the most important thing: who said this, and how much do they actually know about my life?
Not all words carry the same weight. And the weight they deserve has nothing to do with how confidently they were spoken and everything to do with how well the speaker knows you.
The person who has stood beside you through difficult years, who has seen your struggles up close, who knows what you have carried and why you made the choices you did — their words land differently. Even when those words are hard to hear, they come from a place of genuine knowing. They have earned the proximity that gives their opinion meaning.
But the relative who visits once a year and delivers a verdict on your life — the colleague who witnessed one difficult afternoon and built a permanent opinion — the acquaintance who heard one side of one story and decided they understood the whole picture — their words carry no such weight. They are speaking from the outside of a life they have never lived inside.
And yet, strangely, it is often these words we carry the longest. Because they arrived without warning, because we had no defense prepared, because the less someone knows us, the more clinical their judgement sounds — and clinical can be mistaken for true.
There is an old story, told across traditions, that I return to often. A man once approached the Buddha and began insulting him viciously. The Buddha listened, unmoved, and then asked a simple question: “If you offer a gift to someone and they do not accept it, who does the gift belong to?” Confused, the man replied, “It would remain with me.” The Buddha said: “Then I do not accept what you are offering. It remains yours.”
This story is not about being above emotion. It is about something more practical—recognizing that you have a choice in what you receive. Not everything offered to you needs to be taken in.
The answer is not to stop feeling. It is not to build walls or pretend that words cannot reach you. It is to become more discerning about which words you allow to stay. To recognize that someone’s opinion of you is shaped entirely by how much of your life they have actually witnessed — and most people have witnessed very little.
Before you absorb someone’s words, ask: Does this person know my struggles? Have they earned the closeness that makes their opinion matter?
If yes — sit with it, even if it stings. If no — let it pass. It was never yours to carry. And the peace it tried to take from you was never theirs to take.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
