I am not enough without the performance
Am I the only one senses that?
The word ‘perform’ comes from the word performen. It means completing a duty, fulfilling a requirement, accomplishing something.
So, performance by definition, has a beginning and an end. A task begins and gets completed.
But when Shakespeare said,
“All the world is a stage”
“All the men & women merely players”
“They have their exists & their entrances” (Death & life)
Shakespeare grounded the fact that performance is a continuous process. It begins with life and ends on death. There’s no off switch.
A kid learns to perform in his front of his parents and as he grows older he keeps performing in front of friends, lover, colleagues, bosses, maybe even a stranger.
“You are such a good boy”
“You are such a good friend. I am lucky to have you”
“You are an ideal lover. I love you”
“You got the marks. You are put in college”
“You got us our biggest deal. You are promoted”
“You are so kind. We have never met before, still you helped me out.”
We collect all these scorecards based on our performance. As if it’s game of snake & ladder. You have to keep scoring high and go up and up, the moment you fuck up or life fucks you (snake bites), you are pulled down by a level or two.
How good you are performing in life is generally decided by 3 entities:
You
People around you
How life choses to reward you or punish you
1. We are our biggest critics
Before someone else can judge us. We ourselves hang a score card around our neck and choke ourselves. We have to negotiate with our fears and the self-given scorecard to do something we are pulled towards doing. Something that’s scary, risky but has the potential to make you feel free or give asymmetric rewards.
We also have these tiny scorecards for the small stuff. It’s our ledger in which we overthink:
“I should have said something smarter.”
“I was laughing too loudly, what will he think of me?”
“I was too quiet. They probably think I’m boring.”
“Man! I shouldn’t have overshared”
I get such thoughts all the time, so I have made a rule for myself, “To take a bat and beat these thoughts.” It happened already. Let’s not mop around it.
2. Others judge us, but they also forget us.
Whenever I think I am going to be embarrassed with what I am going to do. But I really really want to do it. I think:
“They are going to die tomorrow. They won’t remember.”
Or if it’s just me, I will disappoint. I think:
“I am going to die tomorrow. Do I really want to be curious about this stupid thing at the end?”
Thinking about death solves half of my life problems.
3. Life
Life - the chaos ball of randomness, your decisions, luck, fate, emotional judgement. The scorecard life throws at you is sometimes predictable. Most times unpredictable.
You can do all the right things and still get bitten by the snake.
You must have seen people who are crazy good at their work. But they still got laid off. Someone who is an ideal lover still their partner left them. Someone who is known to eat clean & exercises daily, still gets a heart attack.
Life doesn’t grade on effort. It doesn’t grade on fairness. Sometimes it rewards laziness and punishes diligence just to remind you it can.
The problem with scorecards is that they demand comparison.
A score only means something when it is relative to another score. So you can’t just perform, you have to perform better. Better than yesterday. Better than expectations.
When you perform being a good friend. A good partner. A good son or daughter You keep track of what you are doing because at the end you have a scorecard to make to measure performance:
“I planned the last three dates.”
“I always reach out first.”
“I remembered their birthday. They forgot mine.”
“I listened to their problems for an hour. They only listened to mind for ten minutes.”
Te other person might not be keeping score. They might just be living. Loving messily, inconsistently, without tracking who owes what.
And now you resent them for not playing the same game. You’re exhausted from performing and they seem to just... exist (unbothered & uncaring).
Or worse they are keeping score too. And now the relationship becomes two accountants comparing ledgers. “I did this.” “Well, I did that.”
“Are you enough without the performance?”
I am not. I don’t expect others to be either.
All performance doesn’t bother me. It’s just the external pressure to perform that comes with expectations that guts me. As if someone is dimming my light. And I am not able to see what I want.
I am selfish. I want to do what I want more than what others want of me.
Hope you had some good food for thought.
Poitu Varen
Akanksha