Like shouting at the wind or shining from the inside-out?

I wonder about the significance of witnesses.
Yesterday my directing teacher highlighted something we all must have assumed was true but never really allowed ourselves to believe: the first few years out of college, you will mostly be making work exclusively for an audience of your friends. The imagination fills in the grubby Brooklyn warehouse spaces, the lovable archaic reno-tenements and peoples' living rooms with dimmed kitchen chandelier lighting design (may have just made up that last one). There are a few things sort of funny about this:
Friends have a civic duty (bypassable in the art world, presumably) to applaud you for whatever you do. As honest and direct as they could possibly be, it's like 67% likely that they'll still cushion whatever truthful feedback they might give your work with a "but I love you!" or not even want to enter criticism at all with a demeaning and dismissive: "that was so great!". You'll feel as if you've done something fine. Everyone could be lying to you. Now the question arises: are you actually making work FOR your friends (for them to dislike, or pretend to like, or love, whatever) or are you making work for the entire world but have only managed to round up acquaintances for whatever reason? Two caveats: limited audience, limited interpretation. Secondly, no criticism, no improvement or perspective. And one other thing, depressing and dangerous to suggest -- why would you ever want to make theater just FOR YOUR FRIENDS? Shouldn't the goal always be to transcend space and time and populace with your missive? If all this is so, how does one take these "first few years out of college" with the seriousness required for creating amazing art?
On a physical note, my caffeine headache is rolling over the hill and it feels like someone is squeezing my brain between two palms.
What is this thing to which we want to dedicate our lives?
Maybe it's a need. I think it's compulsion, honestly. I don't think anyone could answer really well for why they have to do theater and not...correspondence journalism, in terms of even those artists with grand delusions of helping heal the world with their art. I've thought a lot this year about how theater is a language just like dance or mathematics or Swahili, and if you feel the need to speak at all you want to do it in your own vibrant, native tongue, the tongue that thrills you to your core.
And I guess discussions (peace talks, relationship dramas, those kinds of things) are usually most productive when everyone speaks the same language. Anything, anywhere, is most productive when everyone speaks the same language. Use your English, no, I don't mean Language language.
Pfuh.