The Age of Performativity

I walked past a young man reading a book at a coffee shop today. He sat with a posture just relaxed enough to appear natural but calculated enough to suggest an awareness of being watched. His eyes scanned the page intently, his fingers pinching the edge of the page ready to turn. Everything about him, his angled pose, the slight smirk of engagement, the periodic sips of coffee timed almost theatrically, screams of effort. It's performative, too obvious, too much of a “look at me not looking at you” attitude.

Or am I just projecting? Maybe I’m cynically imprinting my own skepticism onto him, twisting something mundane into some hollow act of self-exposure. Maybe I’m the one reaching for narratives. But deep down, I don’t believe that’s the case. The world today is steeped in the theater of longing, a desperate need to be seen, felt, understood. And who can blame him for trying? I don’t.

We're living in a peculiar era, where authenticity is hunted but rarely captured. The app-centric, algorithm-driven landscape has sucked the spontaneity out of human connection. As a result, people gravitate toward these small rituals, little performances that might bring them closer to something genuine. Perhaps the young man is secretly wishing someone will notice the author in his hands and start a conversation. Maybe he wants to be approached by someone who shares his literary taste, someone with whom he can skip the painful small talk and dive straight into the profound. The idea is romantic: two strangers’ eyes meet over a shared reference point, and for a brief moment, the world shrinks into something understandable.

But, of course, that doesn't really happen. More likely than not, he'll finish his coffee and continue with his day. He'll walk home, replaying the scene in his mind and editing his movements in retrospect. He might return the next day, hopeful, repeating the script with minor adjustments, like an actor tweaking his performance after every run. That’s the quiet desperation at play, those endless rehearsals for connections that rarely crystallize into anything meaningful.

In this cycle, even the smallest exchanges like a half-hearted smile or a shared acknowledgment of the weather seem to carry disproportionate weight. We’re wired for these brief moments of affirmation, little assurances that our existence hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed. But therein lies the paradox: the more we crave, the more contrived our attempts become. And yet, despite the futility, we keep at it. We keep reading our books at cafés, lingering at bars, making passing eye contact with strangers, forever reaching and forever vanishing. There’s no simple answer here, no clear path from solitude to communion. Just the slow grinding down of our expectations until we stop noticing the absence.

The key is to let go of intention, to stop treating connection like a goal or an accomplishment. The best moments of connection are the ones that emerge when we least expect them, when we’re too preoccupied with our lives to notice them forming. Intention can be a kind of poison, stifling spontaneity and making the desire for connection into an artifice, a forced semblance of what we’re really after. If the young man really wants someone to notice him, he has to be willing to surrender to the randomness of it all, to become just another face in the indifferent crowd.

But this isn’t a resignation to hopelessness. It’s an acknowledgment of how fragile and unpredictable connection really is. It’s about accepting that some things are out of your hands, that the things that last aren’t rewards for calculated behavior but the strange fruits of chance. Are you willing to wait? To be patient and keep faith in a world where nothing is guaranteed?

That’s the challenge, the subtle shift of mind required to live with grace in the face of this uncertainty. And despite all this cynicism, I can’t help but admire the young man for trying. Every book he reads in that café is an act of quiet hopefulness against the passivity that threatens to consume us all. He keeps coming back, keeps believing in the improbability of connection, keeps reading his favorite authors as if they might summon a kindred spirit into his orbit.

It’s easy to laugh at the cringe, scoff at the effort, but the effort itself is a kind of beauty. It’s the attempt that matters, even if it looks awkward or contrived from the outside. So, keep reading, young man. Keep believing that today might be the day.

Because one day, it just might be.

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