Performance — A Trade of Love
The Self Made Cage
Genius.
Impressive.
High achiever.
Words people have used to describe me. It didn’t start that way though.
Dumb.
Delusional.
Boring.
Words people have also used to describe me.
Both came from people who needed me to be something. Neither interested in who I was.
Naturally, who I became in my life was shaped by the combination of this consistent and unrelenting praise and backlash.
Validation became my oxygen. A way to survive the cage of horrible labels I did not want to be trapped inside of. And in attempting to do so, I unknowingly built one for myself.
A cage of being the strong, wise, golden child who excelled in every role she played.
I was that grounded one. The one who became a bridge between the young and the old. The one that stopped others from making mistakes and helped them plan for the long-term. The one who was always there every time they were down. And also the one who learned to cry alone with a pillow to muffle any wounded sounds that threatened to escape that golden cage.
The intention with which I performed that role was so real that I was convinced that that’s just who I am.
The Unnamed Arrival
The beginning of my life put me in the shoes of a person who was meant to stay small. Meant to fail every time they tried to change that destiny.
It took someone bringing it to my attention decades later that I’ve become proof that if you want something bad enough, work hard enough, you will arrive.
Oh yes, you will.
But somehow it took an external reminder for me to be aware of that. Until that moment it all felt so ordinary. An obvious outcome, when it was anything but that.
Here’s the thing — your arrival never arrives because they never defined where this arrival is finally met.
And that my friend, is not a mistake.
Defining arrival is dangerous. It kills the constant movement that’s meant to keep you from asking that one question that will dismantle the entire system our world runs on — Who does this version of myself serves.
You are supposed to spend your life in a daze. Chasing other’s definition of joy through imitating their road to success.
For if you become a person who knows who you are, then you can neither be controlled by praise, nor be threatened by rejection. Your biggest fear gets replaced from not being able to fit in, to not even trying to live a life true to yourself.
You become ungovernable — the wrench that brings the whole machine to a halt.
For most people, it takes time and a lot of experience to figure out who they are, and what a fulfilling life even looks like for them.
For some, it also takes a lot of pain. I was one of them. But I am grateful that I’m standing here now. I’m achingly aware of the fact that if the system had not messed up so badly with me, I could’ve wasted my entire life chasing illusions like too many before me did.
The Glitch
To keep you compliant, the system must keep rewarding you. To make the role you play so ingrained that it stops feeling like a role. It worked on me for a long time. I’m smiling as I write this because for the first time ever, I’m realizing how the same devotion that kept me stuck in this stage, also made me a thorn in this flowery play, by eventually leading me to a place that was never meant to be found.
I arrived.
And I was met by the flickering stage lights of a glitching system.
The Pause
A few weeks ago, a flare up of a health issue left me unable to work. The timing was unfortunate because there is a lot that needs to be done, and most of it needs me to function at a level that would’ve cost me dearly in terms of my well-being.
In the past, I would’ve pushed myself to get it all done regardless of the cost. Thankfully, life has taught me better to choose anything over my health. So that was not going to happen.
Instead, I spent my afternoons on my patio swing listening to the sounds of nature, letting the sun melt on my skin, as I enjoyed the sight of my kiddo watering the plants and getting gentle hugs from the flowers in full bloom. I helped solve the puzzles the clouds made in the blue sky. When my little one couldn’t find the cloud that was shaped like the number 3, I took a picture of it to help them locate it. I watched their face lit up with pure joy when they finally did, before they went back to tending to their garden again.
As the swing rocked me gently, a hummingbird floated in front of me. Hovering, it captured my interest with a curious locking of eyes.
I was mesmerized. Not just by their presence. But by both of ours. Both still, in our awareness of each other.
A sound behind me interrupted the moment, making the tiny visitor fly away.
But the moment didn’t leave me. It became the true definition of exceptionalism for me. A presence so grounded in itself that it makes you feel both enough and motivated, simultaneously. The kind that makes the difference between performing exceptional and being it, so plainly obvious that you cannot, ever, unsee it.
Even more importantly, it was a reminder that I didn’t need a performance report to acknowledge their existence — and they didn’t need one to acknowledge mine. I noticed no flaws because there was no grading sheet in my head. I was simply there with them; in the moment I’m immortalizing here. A moment of nothing, but breathtaking ordinariness.
But regardless of all the beautiful reminders nature sends our way, we keep forgetting that we too are a part of it. And enough as we are.
“Miles to go before I sleep”, used to be a favorite phrase of mine1. But those moments on the swing brought me back to my present. My beautiful dream of a present. Yes, beautiful despite the illness. The last time I remember feeling this at peace was when I was a child. And I realized constant effort never used to be a key ingredient for creating joy back then.
Just how it wasn’t now.
The Overplayed Hand
Setting myself free of this unconscious performance, as it continues to reveal itself in its many layers, felt quite alien to me. I truly was that person who couldn’t get that one typo out of my head that nobody cared about. Whatever I did in my life, I poured all of myself into it. Even when it was just buying a piece of furniture. Everything in my life was built on the premise that it is to last a lifetime. On a foundation of people-pleasing that wasn’t allowed to crumble.
Ironically, this is also what brought about that glitch.
Here’s how the system made a fatal mistake with me:
The system’s standards feel impossible because you are meant to fail them. That’s how you stay stuck in this loop.
It made me push myself far beyond my limits, and I was able to do it because I did it with love. True devotion. Oh, my heart aches while I stop myself from smiling, thinking of all the times I thought I was being of service to others when all they wanted for me to do was to let it all fall apart.
To show I’m not real. To make a mistake.
It felt as though they wanted me to deceive them, so they could finally stop anticipating the moment, and start living in it instead.
Or to find refuge in the knowing that they aren’t any more rotten than others.
My smile when they expected my tears, my understanding when they expected my rage, all became their triggers. Little did they know that I was smiling despite the sorrow because I couldn’t separate them from myself. That by giving to them what I yearned for, I got to live in the energy I know to be true even when I wasn’t receiving it in its physical manifestation.
That by doing so, I was bringing to my world, the awareness of true human connection, while living in a realm that seemed to be drenched in insecurities and consumed by greed.
That in my own way, I was making my human experience survivable.
That I was selfish too. It just didn’t meet their standards of cruelty.
But they weren’t aware of any of this. So my behavior threatened them even more than my ordinary, non-performing self ever did. People could no longer find a weakness to mock, so they started to make them up. It only made me double down on becoming even more perfect. More sacrificial. Outperform every expectation without sacrificing my dignity. Confident I can find that non-existing place of belonging in a space that neither had room to receive what I was offering, nor did it have the awareness of its capacity to expand for it.
All that pain was meant to make me bitter. To act like them. It didn’t.
It only made me learn how to protect my boundaries. It rocked their world with fear because they felt the warm sand slipping out of their fists, and slipping fast.
And in this fear of not being able to tighten the noose around me, a mistake was made — of forgetting to reward me for accepting the system’s terms. Punishing me instead, for even agreeing to the role of a fixer to its constant chaos. A role I never consciously signed up for.
It made me wake up with a jolt — like a person waking up from a nightmare.
It made me aware that in the process of jumping through all these impossible hoops, I made a trade so many of you also did, but probably never noticed.
Of swapping being for becoming.
An arrival that keeps changing its destination, until the identity of a full human being gets replaced for a high-performing machine.
Earned Love
After a lifetime worth of heartache, it became clear that the current state of my world does not allow for it to accept love in its truest form. It’s almost as if we find the thought of it repulsive.
That trying to fix it by continuing to play by its rules, is being delusional.
My Beji’s (grandma) words echoed in my ears — Not everyone knows how to receive love.
It took a deep dive that I cannot take credit for solely, to understand why. Here’s what I found out:
The reason we all accept living in our performance mode, is not just a survival instinct from our childhood when we were dependent on the mercy of our caregivers.
We also do it for love.
Contradictory as it sounds, we all know deep down how important love is. So important in fact, that we cannot risk not having it.
So what do we do?
We get busy earning something that was always meant to be free. We perform because it gives us certainty of our worth. Output ensures we bring value to others, making it difficult for them to abandon us.
So when someone brings their love without expecting performance, it terrifies us. How do we build stability when there’s nothing they depend on us for? So we either push them away, or we start to degrade their self-esteem.
We trade freedom for certainty.
We start pushing ourselves harder and harder, abandoning our ethics and values in the process.
A plea to be loved and seen, confused for ambition.
Which is why exceptionalism is chased only in a way other people could understand and receive. Where we don’t make people feel uncomfortable around us.
By the time we realize that the version of us that the world applauds is merely a small part of our ordinary, made legible for mass consumption, we are already stuck in a life that looks picture perfect on the outside while it slowly chokes the life within us.
Once you are here, it becomes easier to see that exceptionalism, as it exists in our lives, is not our achievement. It’s our survival strategy. Not just physical survival, but also emotional.
And it all worked out beautifully.
It kept you safe. It protected you from being dismissed. Nobody wanted to leave the comfort you provided. And so it became your nervous system’s go to response. A strategy stuck on autopilot, still building things you don’t want, for people who can’t see you, in rooms you would’ve never chosen.
You become a person who has everything they’ve worked for, wondering where joy went.
The Wound of Rebellion
I became aware of something in myself and others recently that I cannot ignore. Of how much we try to convince ourselves that we no longer care about what others have to say. Almost oblivious to the fact that a person who has reached that state feels no need to announce it.
For some of us, the cage simply got a fresh rebrand with wi-fi access. Our master replaced from our immediate crowd to the algorithm.
Others have confused avoidance for freedom. Numbing ourselves to what makes the human experience worthwhile – feeling deeply and letting the emotions move you into action. All just to avoid pain.
We simply cannot stop running away from our humanness.
We can’t always operate out of our logical brain, but we pretend like we can.
We all need to be witnessed, to be seen and celebrated, but we pretend like we don’t.
Our DNA carries the rule that we need to belong in order to survive. We’ve been taught all our lives what’s acceptable — and what’s not. Being witnessed in our good acts helps us feel good, because it helps us feel safe. It works like a signal to our tribe, a translation of yourself. A proof of your worth that have been demanded of you all your life.
It’s part of our yearning to belong. It’s your spirit wanting to experience itself, fully.
But the same society that asks for this proof, teaches you to suppress your instinct to prove it, as evidence that you meet their expectations. So you end up performing — not through your kindness. Not even by feeling the need to be witnessed. But my suppressing that instinct of wanting to be seen, to prove that you aren’t proving anything.
That you truly don’t care.
Seeking external validation is home to disappointment. But pretending not needing it does not help us.
If something someone said still hurts you for a minute, then that doesn’t make you weak.
It’s okay if you fear making mistakes still.
Our emotions aren’t the issue. The issue is letting our emotions take the rein, and acting out of fear which only takes us further away from the life we want.
You can test this theory. Try standing in your vulnerability in situations that would’ve made you run away in the past. See how it makes you feel for yourself.
It’s a dare. Share in the comments below.
The Sovereign
When we say we don’t care about others, we confuse rebellion with sovereignty. They are not the same.
Rebellion is reactive to what it’s running from. It’s dependent on the very system its rejecting. It needs the “other”.
Ironically, rejecting love becomes a form of begging for unconditional love.
Sovereignty is internal. It has no audience. No opposition. Its only witness is the sovereign themselves, and that too in specific moments.
Most of us struggle with the idea because again, as humans we feel safe when we’re witnessed. And sovereignty isn’t declared. It’s lived through intentional choices. And that simply doesn’t feel enough when we are in our state of lack.
So, we keep trying to forge connection through a combination of perfection and rejection.
Meanwhile, the sovereign simply allows love to exist — by staying open to both receiving and releasing it. They don’t try to earn, or control, what simply requires awareness. They practice coming back to themselves, every time fear tries to overshadow love.
On Your Worth
Worth.
What does this word even mean?
And yet we hear it everywhere. So much so that we don’t even question why we are being asked to earn our existence when we already exist.
This tiny little word has caused profound levels of suffering in our world. We have been convinced that our output determines our worth. That the only acceptable version of us is that which fits cleanly into the masses’ framework of what is impressive.
That’s a lie.
We are connected beings, and we all carry this light inside of us that ignites passion and purpose in others, effortlessly. I know all creators have felt this at some point.
Our value is in our presence, not our performance. And it’s definitely not in what we think we bring to the stupid table.
It’s intrinsic to our nature.
As simple as a baby reaching out to touch their mother’s face. That’s enough for them to feel safe, loved, and accepted. That’s enough for them to not feel the need to perform for attention. To not beg for love. Or belonging.
The baby doesn’t care if their mother is Marilyn Monroe or me.
That’s how simple our needs really are.
Our value is reflected in how we show up in our own lives. The gentleness with which we treat ourselves and others. In the safety we build for our collective need to be loved and accepted.
Our ever-expanding wants and obsessions are often just an attempt to compensate for the lack of this presence in our lives. For the lack of connection. Trust. Shared purpose. And a profoundly felt absence of someone who makes us feel seen and understood.
This is something no amount of wealth or fame can replace. Something so rare and precious that most people don’t get to experience it. Especially the wealthy and famous.
So if you want to be of value to others, stop trying to earn it through performance and start connecting with it by living true to yourself — one intentional decision at a time.
Become an example of what it really means to be human, to have a soul, to have the need to give love as much as you want to receive it. To have the need to be taken care of as much as you need to take care of others.
Let your fear and judgement of yourself and others dissolve and open yourself to the truth in front of you, to how desperately we all want to be seen, through the effort we put into our performance. Through our perfection. And our rebellion. And honour all these emotions by acknowledging how you mirror them too. And how you might have acted the same way if you had walked in their shoes.
If shame comes knocking on the door, invite it in for some tea. Sit with it. Let it talk. Let it squeeze your heart. And be prepared for a cleansing you didn’t know you needed.
And then go out and offer this grace to whoever is destined to cross paths with you. Do not let them go without a healthy dose of kindness to carry them through their darkest moments. And don’t forget to notice the absolute blessing of being given the opportunity to make life a more beautiful experience for others.
Your reward doesn’t come from people accepting your love, but from your ability to rejuvenate by living in and out of love. And from being able to receive it when it arrives.
This way of being has nothing to do with your achievements. Nor is it something you prove.
You live it without getting attached to the outcome.
On Self-presence
Since our closest relationships involve other people’s shifting inner states, it’s important to anchor ourselves in self-presence, so that a shift in another person’s state doesn’t cause us to lose ourselves to our reactions.
To accept the fact that as humans, we cannot expect to constantly be vibrating at our highest state. We can only make it our default to which we return.
Luckily for us, we are blessed with a sovereign inner witness. The one you met when shame came to visit. It is the part of you that remains grounded when things start to fall apart. The part that recognizes the urge to perform, to defend, to fix. It shows up in the split-second gap between the chaos around you and your reaction to it.
Over time, it becomes harder to get swept away. And even when you spiral, you’ll notice it sooner — breaking the cycle of pain that comes from reflexively responding to the monsters under your bed.
So yes, presence helps you show up for others — but it’s also how you come back to yourself. The more you practice, the faster you can return, and the less control the outside world has over your behavior.
The Bigger Picture
The thing about performance is that we’ve been doing it for so long that much of how we act has become automatic.
You are performing. I am performing. And the more you become aware of it, the more you see that it doesn’t fully stop with awareness.
The good news is that performance loses its power not by ceasing to exist, but by ceasing to remain invisible to us.
It often takes massive success for humans to wake up to the fact that success born of performance didn’t make them happy. That applause is not connection, but only a confirmation that you have successfully contorted yourself into a shape that is understood by the majority while simultaneously cutting yourself off from experiencing a joyful life that’s unique to you.
That your talent was used to limit you, instead of letting it expand you. That other people’s inability to separate you from what you produce was not only made to be a burden for you to carry, but also something you were told to feel grateful for.
This path isn’t a joke. Once you’re on it, you’ll meet profound grief. Grief from being cut off from your inner knowing. Grief from the realization that people you trusted to guide you pulled you onto a road that ends in disappointment.
The grief of having to carry anger that has nowhere to go because there’s nobody to blame for the years spent struggling, since everybody around you was just as trapped in performance as you were.
We keep telling each other lies. And they are only getting worse, more ridiculously delusional by the moment. Not just on the individual level, but all the way up to where our actions are impacting our planet and all life on it.
We keep talking about creating generational wealth while actively destroying the only home available to our current and future generations.
Our comforts are being subsidized by the genocides of babies and innocent lives around the globe while we go on about our lives as if our money isn’t being used to terrorize and steal from innocent people.
We are all sacrificing the sacred for the show.
The performance does not stop for anything.
Not because humans are inherently evil or selfish. I reject that claim.
Humans worship nature by creating, just like our creator. We break down watching others in pain. Giving gives us joy. How could we be evil?
The Weapon
The problem is that the very need to be witnessed — the most human thing about us — has been weaponized against us.
We’ve been conditioned to feel shame for wanting connection. We’re embarrassed to share our struggles openly.
And when we’re met with a void that is sure to follow this type of existence, we are taught to work harder to earn attention. To monetize our calling. To buy more. To perform joy.
It’s a system designed to keep us running in an endless loop of expectations — because if we stopped, we might actually look at ourselves. And each other.
And that’s dangerous to those who benefit from our isolation. Which is why we’re offered some rewards for our behavior.
The distractions aren’t a mistake. The comforts aren’t an accident. Neither are the gender wars. The racial divides. The class resentment. The patriarchy that wounds everyone it touches. They all have a purpose.
The purpose of keeping us under control by keeping us apart. To not let us ever feel safe and stable. And also to keep the illusion of progress intact enough so we don’t stop running.
To make true connection feel impossible — so we stop trying and settle for consuming instead.
The rage-baits, the sensationalism, the flaunting of power and the ability to get away with it are meant to exhaust our empathy. And our hope for a better world.
It’s all bread and circus. And once you see it, it never leaves you.
And it has worked for far too long. And worked so well that too many of us now believe that we are all evil and selfish.
We are not.
I’m human. I’m not that.
Are you?
Stop letting others tell you who you are.
The Rebirth
It’s time to name that grief and what you sacrificed to become acceptable.
It’s time to reevaluate your goals based on what you want for yourself, and what kind of world you want to leave behind for our planet’s future generations.
It’s time to ask yourself if you can survive being in a relationship where the other isn’t stuck with you.
What To Expect
This ending does not arrive as a single moment of revelation. It accumulates over time, in small decisions. In the version of yourself that chooses not to perform, neither out of a need for praise, nor out of fear of rejection.
It may not come easy. It didn’t for me. For the longest time, I had no mirror other than my dusty inner-witness. I had started to question if I would make it out of the golden cage I had created for myself in one piece. But no price was big enough to stop me from finally pouring into myself.
That, by the way, is where we are trying to arrive. Where we finally see ourselves, whether or not we have others who do the same yet.
Re-defining Impressive
I haven’t posted an essay on Substack for months now. Not because I don’t have things to say, as the length of this essay makes evidently clear. But because it came at a price I, yet again, found myself refusing to pay.
Want to know what’s truly impressive to me?
It’s me not pushing myself to produce more at the price of my health, even when I knew it would not be received well.
It’s me setting boundaries even with myself because I do love writing.
It’s me choosing to solve puzzles in the sky with my little one when the system kept asking for output at the price of everything that’s important to me.
None of these would’ve made any sense to me a few years ago. Now, it makes me feel grateful to have a new chance at life.
The Work
It’s time to ask yourself when you will wake up to this truth. If you want to wait until your next birth, then that’s fine.
Or you can wake up to it right this moment. To the truth that you were exceptional before they told you to prove it.
That the system needed your performance far more than you ever needed its applause.
That what you truly want cannot be bought. Neither can you perform for it. And to let that truth set you free. And to be grateful for it.
The work is remembering this anytime you find yourself spiraling out of control. Every time you find the goal posts shift. Every time your head repeats words you inherited from a system that was never built for your becoming.
Allow the purpose of our existence to simply be expansion through our presence and gifts, instead of shrinking to maintain an image this world approves of.
To be committed to your joy, not to the unsteady crown of others’ admiration.
To not pass down our pain and to give our children play, instead of making them trade it for our own peace of mind.
To experience yourself fully and to leave behind a legacy of love and beautiful, shared memories.
This is it.
Your move. 🫡
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening — Robert Frost
🌶️ Thank you for reading Sweet Chili Truths by Shubhdeep.
A note for you:
If you’ve been struggling lately, I want you to know that you are not alone. You are far more than you realize. And you can handle everything and anything. By yourself. Trust in yourself and trust that in time your people will find you. Keep faith that everything you’ve had to endure, will light the path to your highest good. I’m here for you through my work. Stay open. I love you and pray for you every day.
**Disclaimer: The thoughts shared in this article are based on my personal experiences, observations, and ongoing study. They are not a substitute for professional mental health, medical, or legal advice.**
Curious how to handle the noise around you without losing your sovereignty? Check out my short poem, “Noise”.
🌶️ If this truth hits home, please consider restacking and sharing it with your circle. When you spread this message, you help others identify and shed their conditioning and move toward self-mastery.
This is a masterpiece. I was tempted to restack from almost every paragraph, and i could barely hold myself back, haha.
There's so much in here that I can relate to but also so much I personally needed re-framed. Thank you for your teachings in this and for your openness too.
Much love to you Shuhbdeep❤️