There’s a great golf course near me that carries an amazing yet simple tag line: “Nobody Cares”. It’s the kind of place where nobody keeps track of their score.
It’s an admonition that you should be enjoying the course, your friends, the Whiskey and the weather and not worrying about the score. Why? Because nobody cares….but you. My kinda place.
Much of golf, and life, is spent as if someone is watching, evaluating, keeping track of your score. They aren’t. The simple truth is that nobody is paying attention to you because, you guessed it, they’re too busy worrying about themselves.
If that’s true, then why does it seem to take a lifetime to understand. In your 20s you care what everyone thinks…in your 30s you start to question it…in your 40s you notice most people are focused on their own wins and losses. By the time you reach your 50’s, you should start to realize nobody was ever thinking about you to begin with. Like coming to the realization that professional wrestling is fake.
For a long time, you assume there’s a scoreboard somewhere. You imagine that it tallys things. That your wins, losses, bad decisions, status, relationships, etc. are being tracked. That every so often “people” look at the scoreboard. You and I have been thinking this way since we were eating paste in Pre-K.
We choose careers for how they look to others (see most lawyers). Then we stay in them long after they serve us. You choose friends based on what it says about you. Then you keep them long after the lipstick is off the pig. You choose romantic partners based on how they look and not how they make you feel. Then stay in the relationship too long to avoid being single. The simple truth is that most of your stress comes from people you should’ve let go of earlier.
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Imagine coming to the realization that nobody cares when you’re in hospice. That you’ve lived your entire life for the applause of the fans. Only to find that nobody is even in the cheap seats.
David Duval, a former top PGA Tour golfer, worked his entire life to reach the pinnacle of his sport. In 1999, he finally reached the coveted world number one golfer ranking. In 2001 he won the US Open Golf tournament. Then an amazing thing happened. He realized that nobody cared, including him. He famously asked a friend, “Is this all there is?” Within a short period of time he withdrew from the world stage, seeking a quieter life away from the spotlight.
The “nobody cares” mantra is even tougher for younger folks to accept. Particularly when so much of their lives are lived on display, constantly seeing affirmation. Seeking moments and images to share with their fans on social media platforms.
“Not for ourselves, but for others.”
The worst is the LinkedIn job posting from someone with 18 months of experience: “I’m excited to announce that I have been asked to join the esteemed firm of Do-wee, Cheatem & How as a Junior Associate. In this role I will be leveraging my Merger & Acquisition experience with multi-National corporations and syndicates seeking to find diversified private mezzanine and senior credit facility options, etc.”
Someone should call him and nicely suggest that nobody cares. Not to be mean, but to save him thirty or forty years of thinking somebody does.
It’s just how it works. People are occupied with their own lives, their own concerns, their own version of the same invisible scoreboard. The attention you imagined was never really there in the way you thought.
Imagine coming to this realization in hospice. That you’ve lived your entire life for the applause of people who were never even paying attention .
If no one is keeping score, it doesn’t mean nothing matters. It just means the metrics change. Would you have chosen the same schools, careers, friends and jobs? Would you have moved somewhere else? Would you have dated or married the same people? Probably not. Isn’t it interesting how clear the answers are when you realize that nobody cares?
People are occupied with their own lives, their own concerns, their own version of the same invisible scoreboard.
Of course you can’t go back and re-trade those decisions. They are already baked into the cake. So what’s the point? The point is you aren’t finished yet.
And when you finally accept that nobody cares, something shifts. It means you start caring about the right things. You finally get to focus on what Arthur Brooks calls the four pillars of happiness: faith, family, friends and work that serves others.
It’s about being present. About doing work that serves others. About friendships that don’t feel one-sided. About a life that, if no one ever saw it, would still be pleasing to you.
The only person who ever really kept score…was you. So you might as well keep a different one.
Or better yet—put the golf pencil down entirely because nobody cares.
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