For years I’ve been running into people who feel the need to comment on someone else’s life or decisions. Always from the position of an expert, always with a kind of concern no one asked for. I kept wondering where this comes from, and only later did I realise what they really meant. And why it always sounds the same. At some point I understood these aren’t pieces of advice at all, but a way to justify their own passivity.

Recently I’ve been swapping my usual morning wake-up for a short morning jog. I run through the neighbourhood toward the park and see an elderly lady with a tiny dog. I can already sense a comment coming (I deliberately don’t wear headphones). And sure enough, with a smile, she asks me in the tone of a mother talking to a naughty child: “Why are you tiring yourself out like that, dear sir? Why run in such cold weather?”

I was a bit taken aback, but I smiled and kept going.

Later that scene came back to me, and I started wondering why she actually said it. Maybe out of concern? Or maybe simply because she herself would never do something like that? After all, by that logic you could ask her: why is she walking the dog? Why leave the house? Why do anything? Why even live?

Another time I was sitting with my father-in-law, having coffee, and I mentioned we were going skiing. I didn’t even finish my sentence before the key phrases came flying: “Why do you go skiing, you’ll break something, only the orthopaedists will make money. Maybe stay at home.” I nodded, because what can you really answer to this strange mix of concern and anti-movement propaganda.

Comments like “you’ll break something,” “the orthopaedists will profit,” “it’s too cold,” have nothing to do with care. It’s self-defence. When someone sees you doing something that requires discipline, the easiest move is to label it as foolish. Then their own passivity doesn’t look so bad. The comment becomes a neat way to bounce their fear back: “If I’m not doing this, then no one should.”

Any activity that goes beyond the bare minimum provokes people to judge. Not because they know you, or because they genuinely care. Your actions clash with their worldview, where “I do nothing” is the default setting. The more effort you put in, the more comments they need to soothe themselves.

And I still run, life keeps moving, and the orthopaedists make their money anyway.