Validation is an Outward Journey, and that is its greatest Fallacy

The journey towards achieving balance in your life is inwards. What you think of yourself, your being, your self-worth and self-respect are based on your own experiences. Validation on the other hand is an outward journey. You look for it from people outside you and not from within you and that’s where people go wrong.

There’s nothing wrong with validation as long as you are self-validating yourself and you are not getting that validation from somebody in your life. It is important to understand that people aren’t permanent, not even your parents.

“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”

– Confucius

I try to live a life where I self-validate myself because I connect with myself internally. I understand what is important with all the experiences in my life. And I have tried to live meaningfully through those experiences. And that is a great self-validation process.

The problem arises the moment I look at validation outside. Let me tell you about it from the perspective of our society.

India is largely a patriarchal society. Since time immemorial certain roles have been assigned to the members of our society on the basis of social status, class and amongst various others – gender. Well-defined in their undertaking and rigidity in their adherence has meant husbands to have their own rules, wives to have their own rules, even sons and daughters their own gender-specific rules.

I ask you this- Where do these rules come from in a society? Who makes these rules?
It is from someone in a position of power, in this case men, who decide this is what ‘A’ will do, ‘B’ will do and so on. Whenever you have such “rules” or norms present in a society, you start to build a community that is then dependent on this very society for its validation.

Women are supposed to be weaker and incapable of handling their emotions while men are strong and cannot even shed a tear. Why? An emotion is an emotion. How does it matter enough to be gender-specific in such a harsh, eschewed manner?

All of this is a norm created by someone without taking you, the individual into consideration. Yet, you as an individual are now in a constant battle to live up to this ideal of the society. Growing up, saying yes and no to certain things, rights and wrongs begin to formulate in our minds. These end up creating external sources of validation. Successfully follow through the rules of the land, and you will be validated for your good manners, fail at them and you might just be lynched. Instead of getting married tomorrow you decide to forego tradition and commit to a live-in relationship, this society and the external world will absolutely not validate you. In fact, chances are you might get ostracized instead. You suffer and now are left in a state of constant conflict. You might feel validated internally by your decisions and choices but the society does not stand for it, because it is not a norm it adheres to or appreciates

In this manner you end up as a prisoner to third-party validation in life. You will never be peaceful. You can never be. As someone else or the society as a whole is constantly validating/invalidating you. If you do ABC you are a good person but if you do XYZ you are a bad person. When the locus of your very identity is outside you, if you do well you now want them to tell you, you did well. And if you don’t do well then you weren’t fit enough to be a part of their community to begin with!

Therefore, validation is a good thing but you have to have internal validation and not external validation. Internal validation comes from what matters to you and your experiences in life. And if you find meaning in those experiences, to yourself without the world or its norms, then it is the most beautiful thing. It gets you to become peaceful. It gives you the meaning to live.

If you follow me on any of my social media, you might have already come across this quote I like to share:

“The day you stop racing is the day you win the race.”

– Bob Marley