On the Performance

The more I'm here, the more I realize we're all children. We're – and it’s a scary thing to face: the knowledge that before us stand mountains. I’m lost and scared and lonely and there’s a whole wild world watching me, waiting for me to fall or fly.

I talked with Jack the other day and he expressed some discomfort at this idea that our lives are a performance. What does it mean when every action is a performance of the Self? When are we real? When are we not acting?

It’s an uncomfortable question to deal with because it raises this question of who are we? Or rather, who am I? When am I really me? It’s almost impossible to separate life from the performance because thinking about it creates a kind of meta-performance.
When we start focusing on not performing, we start to perform for ourselves, creating intention and meaning by not performing.

Don’t think about elephants.

Elephant.

Image of an elephant

Jack talked about feeling this constant undercurrent of paranoia, stemming at least in part from not knowing who we perform for. I thought I could identify with him at the time, but now I’m not so sure. It just doesn’t click with me that feeling like we’re performing is a bad thing. And I think it goes back to this idea I have of serving. "The better you can explain who you serve, the more of a purpose you will have in life." Yes, but so long as you’re doing “good” or for that matter doing something, anything at all, does it really matter?

In this performance we call life, it’s all improv anyways. We aren’t reading from some secret script (or at least I’m not. Sometimes it feels like all the rest of you are just to fuck with me). I guess what I’ve come to peace with in this is that it’s always a performance. It’s always been a performance. I’ve always been serving someone or something, be it my friends, my parents, my teachers, whatever undefined higher powers I believe in, or myself. When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter and I can accept that I don’t necessarily know.

I've been called an old soul, and I'm not always sure what that entails. I know that in part at least it's related to the way I view the world. I'm constantly observing, watching. It's one reason why I considered being a journalist or a writer. I notice the details, but also am constantly trying to fit them into the bigger picture, always have.

And, growing up, I know for a fact that it separated me at times because I knew things. I could see what was going on because I was paying attention. I was always paying attention and asking questions.

People thought I was smart, and yeah, I guess that's a part of it, but it was usually more that I'd been paying attention and caught details other people missed and filled in blanks.

I blush and stammer or casually brush off when people call me smart because I secretly hate it. That's not a role I want to fill. Again it comes back to halfdome's half-joking question last quarter as to whether or not I was a TA for Tony.

I provide help, I ask questions, I push people to think as much as I know how because that's what I do. I see a need and if I can, I fill it. I don't want to be special. I don't want to be set apart.

To put it another way, I don't want to be king, but I wouldn't mind being the power behind the throne so to speak.

The performance is about having that control for me. It means I can create who and what I want to be and not rely on everyone else to do that for me. Yes, I'm putting on a farce and becoming someone else for everyone else. But I'm the one who gets to choose how much and for how long. It's my performance.

It's always been my performance.