When Performance Becomes Love

As a child you don’t think about it. You’re curious. You search for recognition, warmth, your place in this world. You’re not yet reflective and when something comes from the outside, a compliment, a look, a “look what he can do”, it feels like arriving. At your place in this world.

Sports. An instrument. Good grades. Look, he’s good at that. At his age. I’m proud of you. Be proud of yourself. What nobody means as harm still triggers something. 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.

Where you’re not that good but pretend to be, it gets complicated. When success doesn’t come, you say it doesn’t bother you. But it does. And that’s where it starts. Disappointment from failure. Not because the success is missing but because love disappears with it.

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

At some point you’re in conversations and already rushing to the next one. You love and plan at the same time. You take care of your family and your company at the same time. You listen and calculate at the same time. You’re awake. Always. Everywhere. But are you really 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. With work, with stimulation and the next idea. The next proof that this is your place in this world. You keep filling until there’s no room left. For anything or anyone. And certainly not for yourself.

A child looks at you and expects something. A response. Criticism. Ideally 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 instead only ever gets praise and criticism, 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 is telling him.

I wasn’t there yesterday. And if I keep going like this, I won’t be there tomorrow either. And the question isn’t whether you come back, whether you were ever there. The question is, were you ever with yourself the way you want to be with your child.