When Performance Becomes Love

As a child you don’t think about it. You search. Recognition, warmth, a place. You’re not reflective, you’re hungry. And when something comes from the outside, a compliment, a look, a “look what he can do”, it feels like arriving.

Sports. An instrument. Good grades. Look, he’s good at that. I’m proud of you. Be proud of yourself. Nobody means any harm. It’s right to give praise. But something builds up, quietly, layer by layer. I please. So I am loved. So I have a place in this world. Praise becomes recognition becomes love becomes ego becomes even more performance. Performance turns into love. Control turns into safety. Function turns into closeness.

And where you’re not good, you pretend to be. When success doesn’t come, you say it doesn’t bother you. But it does. That’s how it starts. Disappointment from failure. Not because the success is missing. But because love leaves with it.

That’s how being human works. But if you recognize it in yourself, you’re freer.

At some point you’re in conversations and already in the next one. You love and plan at the same time. You’re a father and a manager at the same time. You listen and calculate at the same time. You’re awake. Always. Everywhere. But you’re not there.

When a moment comes where nothing happens, there’s no calm. There’s emptiness. And you confuse emptiness with danger. So you fill it. Work. Stimulation. The next idea. The next proof. You fill until there’s no room left. For anything or anyone. Including yourself.

A child looks at you. It expects something. A response. Criticism. Praise. In its eyes there’s fear or hope. Do you see that. Or are you full of your own thoughts from work, from problems, and you just look back and put on a face from the standard set of reactions you’ve assembled because the child was satisfied after and quiet.

I love you. Three words. They mean: it doesn’t matter what you do. Good or bad. You get to judge it yourself. It’s always ok to be who you are. I love you. Always.

But when a child gets praise and criticism instead of that, it drowns out the inner voice. Then it searches outside for what can only grow inside. And at some point there’s an adult sitting there who functions, delivers, is strong. And no longer knows what his own voice sounds like.

I wasn’t there yesterday. And if I keep going like this, I won’t be there tomorrow either.

The question isn’t how you come back. Or whether you were ever there. The question is, were you ever with yourself the way you want to be with your child.