This question has always puzzled me. When I was a teenager and I went to the countryside, somewhere near Bucharest, our grandmother sometimes told me to come in a skirt, a dress, like a girl, not in pants, because people will laugh at me.
When I started working, at my first job as a French teacher, one of the college principals drew my attention to my clothes several times: it wasn’t good to come in pants, what will the children say?
When I got divorced, I avoided telling my parents for a while precisely because I had heard that it was not good to do various things because ‘What will people say?’
People don’t know what they are saying, I don’t know if the world ever cares what we do. The world sees itself in its own interests. What if the ‘world’ gossips? Of course, whatever we do, people will continue to talk, it will still find everyday topics of discussion; we just don’t expect to talk about Schopenhauer, Bergson, or Kant. We ourselves are part of the people. But what is essential to accept is that we do not live with all of those people around us, it is good to do things so that we are consistent with ourselves, to be well, to seek our own balance, regardless of the ‘standards’ of the world. If we want to have short hair and wear pants, as long as we are in balance with ourselves, as long as we look good and feel good, the whispers of the world should leave us cold. His tyranny of ‘what the world will say’, of which Heidegger spoke, oppresses us, brings us to our knees, limits our