Recently, I stumbled on a post by a random person in a group on telegram where she wrote about why she quit Facebook and her justification for doing so. She mentioned a number of reasons as to why she made that decision but one that stuck with me was the description of her battle with -in her words- wanting to live for an appreciation that has a zero value in the life that she lived. In other words, seeking validation from people that don’t really matter. In the world that we live in today, where everything has gone digital and nearly everyone lives online, I realized this is not just solely a personal battle of hers but a constant struggle for most of us.
Everyday that we wake up, we are constantly faced with the need to put ourselves out here. When we travel, we want to tell everyone our location especially if it’s an exotic one. When we’ve found love, we are driven by an obligation to let other people see how we are in love and who we are in love with. When we are happy, we want to instantly share it with the rest of the world because it just feels right. Have you ever wondered why we do any of these things? Do you think that, consciously or subconsciously, we are trying to seek approvals from people online for how we choose to live our lives by constantly providing these information?
It is understandable that wanting to be seen as a respectable, happy and fulfilled person is a naturally driven desire. Live a good life and let it be known. However, what happens when we constantly urge ourselves to fuel our online perception all the time so that other people, that probably do not even know us, may see us in some sort of light?
I use the word “constantly” a lot as it truly describes how I feel about this topic. Because, it’s important to not be confused that this post is not in any way against owning an online presence, especially in today’s world where most businesses and other forms of daily activities are needed to be carried out online.
It feels good when we upload a picture on Instagram and we get likes and comments from several people about how good we look and how we are always rocking it or when we send a tweet and we get tons of people to retweet it. It puts smiles in our hearts and gives us the impression that, there are people that approves of our appearance, how we choose to live and generally agree with our idea of things. So, we do it constantly so that we can get these said “approvals” every time and the cycle continues and before we know it, we are stuck with the need to “constantly” churn out material, fake or genuine, for people to see so that their perceptions of us may continue to hold.
We have become a generation that hopelessly seeks acceptance from people that we barely even know because it has begun to feel natural for us to appear this way towards other people and like Simon Sinek always say, these things hits us with dopamine shots that are very addictive and it sure as hell doesn’t get easier from here. Unless of course, we choose to do things in a different way or so I believe.
Imagine the amount of high we get off these accolades that we get from people that we may not even know and how much it motivates us. Imagine how it will make us strive to become even better so that we may continue to show ourselves out. Imagine if we could harness the power of these things and channel them towards helping us achieve compliments that far supercedes things like, “your new picture on the gram looks really lovely” and instead, we get to hear things like, “you’re doing a wonderful job making these changes to the world”.
Imagine the extent of power that a person that seeks the right form of validation wields.
“The only thing that I’m sure of, is that I know nothing”- A brilliant woman from Quora.