I’m full of shit, we’re all full of shit, every last one of us. And that’s not cynicism, that’s the most liberating truth you’ll ever swallow. We perform every goddamn day. For our lovers, our bosses, ourselves in the mirror at 3 AM when the pills have worn off and we’re wondering who the hell that person is staring back.
I walk into the Old Union at Stanford and I’m already making choices, how to stand, what to say, which version of myself to trot out for inspection. My “authentic self”? That’s a performance too, maybe the most carefully rehearsed one of all. I’m constantly telegraphing who I want to be, begging for someone to see through the act while simultaneously perfecting the choreography.
But here’s where it gets interesting, where it stops being depressing and starts being human: I trust performances precisely because they are performances. There’s more truth in deliberate artifice than in whatever bullshit “genuine” moment people are selling. At least Becky or Rebecca know what they’re doing. They’re trying, reaching out across the void, saying “this is how I want you to see me, this is the story I’m telling about myself.”
That vulnerability, that desperate hope that someone will recognize the person you’re trying so hard to be, that’s the realest thing about us. We’re all just doing our best impression of ourselves, hoping someone in the audience believes it enough to love us anyway.