The Quiet Art of Having Nothing to Prove
Medium | 24.01.2026 03:15
The Quiet Art of Having Nothing to Prove
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Why We Fear Ordinary Lives — and the Softness We’re Told to Perform
By ’Rele Pearce
There is a quiet relief that comes when you finally stop performing your life.
When you no longer treat your days as evidence.
When you no longer approach every room as an evaluation.
When you finally breathe without trying to impress anyone — real or imagined.
It took me years to arrive here.
For a long season, I lived under a microscope I never asked for but somehow carried. I measured myself by outcomes, by how well things looked, by how convincingly I could say “We are fine,” even on days when fine was an act of endurance.
I wasn’t chasing extraordinariness for the joy of it.
I was chasing it to quiet a fear I couldn’t name:
the fear of being ordinary.
Why We Fear Ordinary Lives
We grow up believing that meaning must be spectacular:
· the marriage must be a testimony
· the career must be meteoric
· the children must be prodigies
· the life must be enviable
Ordinary feels like an insult in Lagos.
We baptize exhaustion and call it ambition.
We decorate our striving in spiritual language to make the pressure sound holy.
Somewhere inside this constant performance, we absorb a dangerous lie:
If my life is simple, perhaps it is unimpressive.
If my life is quiet, perhaps it is small.
If my life is ordinary, perhaps I am too.
But ordinary life is not the opposite of greatness.
Ordinary life is the opposite of distortion.
When Strength Turns Into Performance
There was a time I believed strength meant proving something —
proving I can carry everything,
proving I can succeed without struggling,
proving I could raise a child under scrutiny and still emerge spotless.
It wasn’t the motherhood that exhausted me.
It was the expectation.
Expectation from culture.
Expectation from the faith spaces I loved.
Expectation from the imaginary panel of judges I carried in my head.
Healing began the day I realized I no longer owed anyone a presentation.
But healing has an unexpected side effect:
Your life becomes smaller in ways that matter, and larger in ways that save you.
The “Softness” Debate Women Did Not Ask For
This performance often takes on a gendered script. A few weeks ago, I had a long, animated conversation with friends about “female softness.”
A couple we know — both globally educated, both accomplished — had been arguing because the husband wanted his wife to be “softer.” For hours, we dissected what “soft” meant.
One friend said,
“Soft? If you wanted soft, you should have married soft. Don’t marry a formidable woman and then request softness. Marry Hafusat from Okemesi if softness is your priority.”
Another added,
“A man’s definition of ‘soft’ is not the Oxford definition.”
We laughed, but there was a truth hiding inside the humour:
Many men want women to be gentler toward them, not gentler within themselves.
They want quietness, not softness.
Less capability, not more peace.
Less voice, not more tenderness.
Modern women are discovering that “softness,” as defined by many men, is simply a request for diminished power.
Marriage, Softness, and My Second-Time-Around Life
In my own second-time-around life, with Dokun, I discovered something that shifted everything:
A healthy man does not require your exhaustion to feel strong.
A whole man is not threatened by your voice.
A stable man does not interpret your competence as competition.
Dokun carries his weight with steadiness, not entitlement.
With presence, not pressure.
With partnership, not performance.
And because his love does not demand that I shrink, I am learning a different kind of softness —
softness that grows from rest, not fear.
softness that comes from safety, not suppression.
softness that is chosen, not extracted.
The softness I practice now is not for him.
It is for me.
It is for the woman who has learned she does not need to disappear to be loved.
The Addiction to Impressing Invisible People
Many of the people we try to impress don’t exist.
They are:
· the critics we imagine
· the classmates we still compete with silently
· the social media audience we overestimate
· the algorithm that rewards performance
· the family expectations we inherited but never agreed to
We’re not afraid of ordinary lives.
We’re afraid of being overlooked.
But overlooked by who?
And why did their gaze become our compass?
The Courage to Live Human-Sized Lives
These days, I am drawn to the small, unremarkable things:
A quiet kitchen table.
A cup of tea brewed properly.
A conversation with my daughter that does not need to become a lesson.
An evening with Dokun that is peaceful, not performative.
A day where nothing exceptional happened except rest.
An afternoon lunch with my mom
A day out with my Girls
There is a kind of confidence that does not need witnesses.
The kind that lets you be soft without being erased.
The kind that lets you be simple without being overlooked.
The kind that knows your worth is not tied to applause.
What Our Children Need
A wise friend said something that has stayed with me:
“May it be enough for our children to be regular.”
Not precocious.
Not performing.
Not optimized like a tech product.
Just whole.
Just joyful.
Just themselves.
Children do not need extraordinariness.
They need lives that breathe.
They need parents who know how to rest.
They need homes that are human-sized, not curated like a résumé.
The Quiet Art of Having Nothing to Prove
This is what I know now:
The quiet art of having nothing to prove is not pride.
It is peace.
It is the courage to choose simplicity over spectacle.
Presence over performance.
Joy over justification.
Rest over relevance.
It is the gentle rebellion of saying:
“I am enough, even without the noise.”
And slowly — softly — you become the kind of woman who no longer auditions for her own life.
A woman who lives human-sized and whole.
A woman who breathes without apology.
A woman whose ordinary life is finally allowed to be extraordinary in the ways that matter.
— ’Rele Pearce
About The Author:
‘Rele Pearce is the author of Second Time Around. She writes about faith, culture, and the interior work of rebuilding with honesty and restraint.
Are you ready to stop performing?
In my book, I explore the journey of reclaiming your voice and your peace after life’s first chapters come to a close.
