The Validation

The source for constant need of validation and emptiness that lies without and how everyone is not good enough for themselves

Have you ever felt out of place?

Out of touch? Or even left behind? Felt like you don’t belong? Like everyone has their things sorted out and figured out while you’re only getting started? Do they have something that you don’t, something that you wish you had, or something you long to have.

I feel that it’s understated or ah, it feels like we live in a dog eat dog world–or at least that’s how I see it. Recently I have felt bombarded with information regarding achievements cloaked with gratitude, yet at the same time I also felt that that information has little to nothing for the improvement of the readers, or worse, it makes them feel shitty.

My thoughts leads me to two different conclusions,

Is it the man itself that is disturbed or the content that the man consumes  that leads to that man feeling disturbed?

Let’s talk about why I feel the need to write this article.

1. Writing an article helps me clear my head.

2. What I want to clear my head about is figuring out whether information from social media could amplify insecurity in oneself.

The Insecurity.

I want to talk about how and why insecurity is a major problem and rapidly evolving, at least in my surrounding environments.

1. The pace of how information could be transferred is growing ever rapidly

2. The pace of how human process information stays constant

3. The pressure that is exerted to human increased linearly with age

Now I could see how this could snowballs into the perfect recipe of disaster.

People constantly lives in other people lives

We trapped our mind that we hate regularity, we trapped our mind wishing that we could’ve been more than who we are, we trapped our mind hoping that we can live life with more excitement, with more will to live, with more passion to see and live another day. We wish to be someone that are not ourselves or at least we thought that our life is less good than them.

We’re starting to feel uncomfortable walking in our own skin, we see our reflections in a place that we only wish to become, afraid to go back and live with our real skin. We put our burden on our past selves, wishing something would have been changed. We hope and pray that if we blame our past selves hard enough, perhaps our future-self would change and inevitably trip ourselves to the pit of despair with an infinite loopback of negativity.

The Source. 

Try to reflect on what time or what action forms the leap. Leap is a metaphor in which you feel a sudden change of emotion. It feels that you’re spiraling out of control. Because I feel that we all have those moments, as much as those moments make us human.

You see, as much as self loathing is a bad thing, self reflectance used to be necessary for survival. This goes along with admiring other people, being considerate, to some extreme, being unlikeable in the pack could mean being left out and literally dying alone.

As hunter gatherers, I imagine that it would be natural to prove our worth and value by showcasing our skills or talents to the pack. To put it simply:

We continuously seek validation from other people.

The Race.

I believe that society will inevitably form a hierarchy of importance. We will inevitably form a standardized validity measurement based on quantifiable metrics. We will find a way to grade people around us based on usefulness. And you cannot measure usefulness without some degree of less usefulness or uselessness.

And in most cases, or at least how I figured it out, it’s hard to find a friend to pat your back and say “hey, it’s fine even if you don’t obtain it.” It’s a hard conversation to be brought up and our insecurity might hold us from sharing our thoughts to begin with.

Despair by Bertha Wegmann

The Emptiness

If you’re reading this and you made it this far. Listen, even if you fail to obtain the things you really wish for, be it grades, love life, a functional family, good food, achievements, wage, and even if everyone seems to take it for granted on how good they have it, you really don’t need to feel that there is something missing within you because there isn’t anything missing. There isn’t an empty space that needs filling.

There never was an empty space to fill in order for you to be happy. Even with your imperfections you are perfect.

Listen, chances are everyone feels as desperate as you are at times. You need not to feel alone, it's human to feel empty as much as it is human to feel pain. We and our ancestors feel the need to be validated of value all the time. But that doesn’t mean that you should feel miserable when you don’t meet the artificial standards. The only standardized measurement that you need to keep up is the one that you make yourself. The one that you understand the pace of. The one that you don’t feel any pressure fulfilling, the one that no one pressures you of fulfilling. Because at the end of the day, you live for yourself.

The Validation.

As much as this all sounds like a theory, believe me when I say this: people feel overwhelmed all the time. We just somehow don't collectively validate that thought, it may be because we are raised in an environment so competitive, feeling overwhelmed might be considered as underperforming. Whatever you’re overworking for, whatever your dream is, it’s much better to live that dream alive and well.

If this is all that you really wanted, then why are you feeling miserable?

For me, finding out that the majority of my friends are secretly feeling overwhelmed is how my assumption that we might be living in an environment that is extremely prone to burnout and that a lot of people are secretly burned out was validated.

Losing desire for doing the stuff we usually love to do, feeling so well adapted under pressure that you feel the need to be under pressure, and losing sense of time and space from the overwhelming today's deadlines and next week's deadlines. The feeling or need to catch up to something. The feeling of not being good enough.

No one is good enough for themselves.

We constantly face our own worst critics, ourselves. Even if it sounds nonsensical, my last theory would be to assume that we will eventually find a way to lie and cheat our own minds into submission, thinking that we are not good enough. It’s like a major blindspot that often fails to see but can be pointed out by others. From my experience, the best way to deal with it is to reach out and share how you feel and to realize that feeling this means that we are normal and that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. This is the purpose of this article all along: to share the unspoken story and insecurities of mine and to validate my fears–that everything as it is and it’s okay, and it’s really really okay.

Art by Allangois

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This piece was originally written in 4 April 2022