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Aurelius Told Me to Ignore Her
I sat down with a taco, a notebook, and Marcus Aurelius in my ears to finally figure out why I am the way I am. Then the girl at the next table made an announcement to the entire room. And checked if everyone heard it.
Picture this
Caught yourself watching people while you were supposed to be working on yourself? Same. I talk about exactly this kind of thing with other founders and builders. Come argue with me about it.
For the questions you can’t ask on LinkedIn.
Oct 20, 2026
I was eating a taco and trying to figure out why I am the way I am.
In my ears: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. In front of me, my notes. My parents, what they handed me on purpose and what they handed me by accident, and how much of me was ever my choice. Deep work. The emperor and I, two serious people, looking inward.
At one point, Marcus reminded me how much trouble you save yourself by not paying attention to what your neighbor says or does.
At the next table, two English girls were chatting. Then one of them said, loud enough to drown out the emperor:
“I won’t have sex today. Well… we’ll see. Hahaha.”
Then she looked up. Her eyes skipped her friend and swept the room, the way a comedian counts the laughs after a punchline. The conversation rolled on, loud and about nothing. Sentence. Sweep. Sentence. Sweep.
She was looking for an audience.
I was looking for myself.
Guess which one of us found what she came for.
My notes stopped. My taco went cold. Marcus kept talking, and for the first time all afternoon, nobody was listening to him. I had a Roman emperor in one ear telling me to ignore my neighbor and my neighbor in the other ear making that impossible. She won. She didn’t even know there was a contest.
Psychologists call the feeling that everyone is watching you the spotlight effect. Most people fear it’s on. She seemed afraid it wasn’t. And the person she finally caught in it was the only one in the room who had specifically sat down to think about nobody but herself.
I’d come to understand my own identity. I left knowing more about her sex life than my childhood.
And now I’ve written it down. Edited it. Published it.
She scanned that whole room for an audience.
She found one. It’s you.
Quick answers
What is the spotlight effect?
The spotlight effect is our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice our appearance and behavior. Psychologists Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky named it in a study published in 2000.
How was the spotlight effect tested?
In the original experiments, students wearing a T-shirt with Barry Manilow’s face overestimated how many people in the room noticed it. People in group discussions also overestimated how much their own comments, good or bad, stood out to others. The researchers explain it this way: we start from our own vivid experience of ourselves and don’t adjust enough for the fact that everyone else is busy with their own.
What did Marcus Aurelius say about watching your neighbor?
In Meditations 4.18, he writes that you save yourself a lot of trouble by not paying attention to what your neighbor says, does, or thinks, and by focusing on whether your own actions are right.
Sources
Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: An egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 211–222. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.211
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations, Book 4, §18. Translated by George Long (1862). https://lexundria.com/m_aur_med/4/lg
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