I have a gift for you. I have developed a life-changing theory which simply goes: Whatever. Who Cares? It could be as transformative as The Let Them Theory, but I have neither the time nor discipline to turn mine into 80,000 best-selling words. So let me explain Whatever. Who Cares? in around 800.
I’ve recently moved house. Downsized into a townhouse perfect for our little family of fun-but-slightly-fading Gen X parents and one Gen Z daughter on the precipice of her never-home era.
It’s been brutally exhausting to sift through and responsibly chuck a combined 128 years of junk, but enormously liberating. It feels so good to declutter, detach, decomplicate our lives. To intentionally embody enough-ness. To go from the family who had so much excess, you’d think we were preparing for a zombie apocalypse, to now having just one of what we need – and no more.
Though, as a card-carrying sentimentalist, I can say it hasn’t been easy. I am a collector of stuff and hoarder of memories. I loved my things and miss being surrounded by them. When space is scarce, you keep things sparse, so you’re minimalist by default. To me our townhouse feels less like a home, and more like a serviced apartment (except the cleaners have forgotten to come.)
So I decided that bold and creative design would bring the “us” into our house. Think colour-washed bedrooms, wallpapered ceilings, stairs that rainbow their way from one floor to the next. Maybe a mirror ball in the bathroom. A homage to whimsy and joy – and a serious lapse in judgment, according to anyone I shared my plans with: apparently, what I imagined was committing aesthetic atrocities.
Who cares what anyone thinks? Who cares about resale? Why would I limit this home’s potential out of some fear of it being too much for other people?
JO STANLEY
Of course, it’s my house and I can do what I want, but individuality is a fragile thing and consensus is very convincing. Enough people told me I should consider resale and what my future imaginary buyers might want that I did, for a moment, put my plans and Pinterest on pause. I pondered, should I be making more sensible choices? Be more broadly acceptable? Offend the fewest possible people? Play it safe?
After a week ruminating on that, I landed on the theory that has changed my life (and may yet change yours): Whatever. Who Cares?
Who cares what anyone thinks? Who cares about resale? Why would I limit this home’s potential out of some fear of it being too much for other people? We live here now. So whatever. Who cares?
As I adopted my new-found mantra, I observed how often in other parts of my life I needed it. Am I too old to wear this? Whatever. Who cares? Should I have said that thing in the meeting? Did that person think I was too loud? Can my neighbours hear me singing Chandelier by Sia at the top of my voice, a song I can neither sing nor have any right inflicting on others? Whatever. Who cares?
I both loved this new sensation of freely playing big and bold, and was deeply challenged by a truth I had to admit. And that is: I have, in many ways in recent years, deliberately chosen to be small.
There’s a lot said about middle-aged women becoming invisible – and of course there’s truth in it. Society conspires to disappear us, and we are not responsible for the cultural forces that devalue us as we get older. But if I’m honest with myself, I can see at times I’ve been complicit in my own disappearance.
There has been good reason: in the strange and unsettling years when I’ve released my younger self without yet knowing who I’m becoming, I have felt a loss of confidence, felt more self-conscious. So my response has been to retreat, become more cautious. Dull the colour and quieten the creative. To minimise my maximalist side, until bit by bit there was less and less of me I liked.
To a degree, it was easier than fighting to be seen. Partly because I’m very tired and have forgotten how to dress. Sometimes even leaving the house requires more effort than I can muster.
But this new home, this urge to splash passion and fun across every room, is breathing life back into the me I have always liked best. And it has released me from needing to know how things will turn out because the joy is in the trying, the playing, the doing – without always having one eye on the future.
So that’s my Whatever. Who Cares? theory. I’m excited to see what you do with it. I’ll be using mine to choose the brightest colours, the boldest patterns and wallpaper I may one day regret. But you guessed it – whatever. Who cares? I live here.
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Jo Stanley is a writer, actor, radio broadcaster.Connect via X.
