If you're forty, or fifty, or thirty, or any age where you're exhausting yourself performing for people who've already left the theater, please hear this: Stop.
At forty, I was teaching high school English. My ex-husband had left when the kids were toddlers, yet I caught myself having imaginary conversations with him daily.
I'd justify why I let our son quit baseball (he hated it, loved art instead). I'd explain why I bought the expensive cereal (it was the only thing our daughter would eat for breakfast).
He wasn't there. He hadn't been there. But I was still auditioning for his approval, still trying to prove I could handle everything he said I couldn't.
Iskra Fileva, an associate professor of philosophy, captures something I wish I'd understood then:
"We sometimes fail to appreciate the love and friendship of people who value us. Instead, we seek the approval of those who do not currently and perhaps never will value us."
How many hours did I spend crafting the perfect response to his criticism, even though he'd never hear it? How many decisions did I second-guess through his absent eyes?
Then there was my principal early in my career. He made it clear from day one that he wanted me gone. He'd purse his lips when he saw me rushing in from dropping the kids at before-school care. He'd make pointed comments during staff meetings, his eyes finding mine across the room.
I became a circus performer, juggling more than any human should. I arrived earlier, stayed later, volunteered for every committee that would have me. Spring carnival? I'd run three booths. Curriculum review? I'd take the extra sections nobody wanted. Parent complaints? I'd smooth them over with exhausting diplomacy. I graded papers until my eyes burned, created elaborate lesson plans that could have been published, all while racing home to help with homework and cook dinner from whatever was on sale that week.
Years of this. Years of arriving at 6:30 AM and leaving at 6:30 PM. Years of missed bedtime stories and rushed morning hugs. When he finally left, he couldn't remember my children's names. Not even their names. All that performing, all that proving, and I'd never moved from the category he'd placed me in.
But perhaps the most painful audience was my own family. After our parents died and I needed to work, my sisters acted like I'd committed treason when I couldn't always make family events.
Every holiday became a marathon. I'd drive hours, kids cranky in the backseat, to prove I was still a good daughter, a good sister. I'd arrive exhausted and leave exhausted, having spent the entire visit defending my choices. They never visited me. Years, and they never once made that drive to see how we lived.
I remember one Thanksgiving, making that drive through freezing rain, white-knuckling the steering wheel while the kids slept. I was terrified we'd skid off the road, but more terrified of the guilt I'd face if we didn't show up. That's when you know you're performing for the wrong audience—when their approval matters more than your safety.
What breaks my heart now, looking back, is how much energy I gave to those critics while barely noticing my actual supporters.
My colleague Sarah covered my classes without complaint when my daughter was sick. She brought soup to our house, sat with me while I cried from exhaustion, never once suggesting I was falling apart. My neighbor taught my son to make dumplings, letting him fold them wrong a hundred times until he got it right. She never mentioned that I'd kept her casserole dish for six months, just smiled when I finally returned it, embarrassed and apologizing.
And my students—those beautiful, complicated teenagers who saw through everything. They left anonymous gifts on my desk. Chocolate bars with notes saying "You look tired, eat this." A coffee mug that said "World's Okayest Teacher" that made me laugh until I cried. A handwritten poem about how I'd helped them through their parents' divorce. They saw me, really saw me, not as a failure trying to hold it together, but as someone who understood their struggles because I was living them too.
At seventy, with creaky knees that click when I walk and hands that struggle with jar lids, I've finally learned the lesson I wish I could have taught that forty-year-old woman: The people who are really in your corner don't need convincing.
They show up without being asked. They see your worth without performance reviews. They love you not despite your struggles but because of how you meet them. They're not grading you on some invisible rubric. They're not waiting for you to prove yourself. They're already convinced. They've been convinced from the beginning.
If you're forty, or fifty, or thirty, or any age where you're exhausting yourself performing for people who've already left the theater, please hear this: Stop.
The sunrise doesn't announce itself or beg for witnesses. It simply arrives, and those who are watching will see it. The people in your corner are already watching. They've been there all along, waiting for you to stop performing long enough to notice them applauding.
