emotion is a performance art

i used to believe that i was just not a very outwardly expressive person. whether or not that was actually true is debatable, but at the very least, i have a strong distinction in my mind between strong emotions and the prudence of allowing them to be seen. keeping my cards close to my chest, for most of my memory, has been the default option.

in any case, i think i have developed over time, through a fair amount of observation and mimicry, a more normal way of interacting with the world. not to say that i am, or have ever felt, anything like "normal," if that’s even a thing. rather, i have grown accustomed to projecting my personality and thoughts (at times) to be more extreme or evident than they would naturally express themselves, so that i would be more easily known.

which, like, we all do to some extent, right? we all find ways to project some version or another of who we are. it's not even fake to do so, i think. no person is all and exclusively one way.

so it seems like there is a performative nature to self expression, no matter how you slice it. this becomes even more evident when you are deliberately trying to communicate with others. for example: maybe you give me a birthday present, and it's something i feel very excited about. i might not naturally express a lot of excitement normally, even if i feel it. but for your benefit, i might make a show of acting very excited, so that you will correctly understand the truth, that i am actually excited and pleased by this. it's strange because i have to go the extra mile and exaggerate in order to correctly convey the truth.

so the strange question becomes this: how much of expression is a performance for someone else's benefit, and how much of it is "genuine"? if i express myself (in face, in voice, or in action) in a way that feels genuine to me but gives someone else a wrong idea of my meaning, is that more or less "true" than creating a "performance" to help them understand me better?

also, this gets even more twisted once you start to see expression not only as an outpouring of yourself, but a reinforcement or a teaching to yourself. so does my expressing something externally make it more true, like a self-fulfilling prophecy? if, for example, i laugh loudly at something, do i reinforce my own feeling of amusement?

i know my definitions are a mess here, which is making this harder to sort through. what does it mean for something to be true, vs. genuine? my immediate thought is "what i mean in my head" vs. "the effect caused inevitably or unconsciously by what's happening in my head," respectively. whereas by performance, i mean "something i am doing intentionally, to produce a specific effect." and by expression, i mean "the way i appear, sound, or act in response to something." anyway, moving on!

weirdly, this kind of ties back into my belief that we ourselves are something that we are simultaneously discovering and deciding. my "self-expression," as an extension of "myself" is, to some extent, something that flows out of who i am. and in a way, so does the way i make decisions about that expression. but also, to some extent, the expressions (and the decisions to respond in those ways) inform the trajectory of who i grow into.