Everyone Is Performing, and the Audience Is Also Performing
We used to perform on stages. Now we perform at breakfast. Somewhere between the curated brunch photo and the 'casual' candid, we all became actors in a play nobody auditioned for.
There was a time when performing required a stage, a costume, and at least one person who had paid to watch. Now it requires a phone and a mild sense of dissatisfaction. We perform our mornings, our workouts, our grief, our productivity. Even our authenticity is performed — carefully lit, thoughtfully captioned, posted at the hour when the algorithm is most generous.
The strange part is not that we perform. Humans have always performed; it is half of what culture is. The strange part is that the audience is performing too. The likes you receive are not applause — they are other performers, waving from their own stages, hoping you'll wave back.
I don't say this with contempt. I say it as a fellow actor who has absolutely checked how his last post was doing while pretending to listen in a meeting. The question that interests me is not how to stop performing — that ship sailed with the first cave painting — but how to remember which parts of us exist when nobody is watching.
Because something does exist when nobody is watching. The thoughts you have in the shower. The version of you that sings badly in the car. That person is the author of everything else. Maybe the whole game is to keep feeding that person, quietly, while the show goes on.