Validation

Confessions of a Validation Addict

This essay was written as a part of a collaborative exercise with fellow writers in the Delhi NCR Substack group. Links to their essays are at the end of the article.

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The plant you see has been in my garden since before I was born. It can vote. It’s old enough to have a mid-life crisis. I suspect that isn’t why it’s frowning, though.

The plant that has my name

I never bothered finding out which plant it actually is. My family just calls it my plant, because it wilts the fastest. It doesn’t lose its color, doesn’t lose the quality of its leaves. But give it a little less water, let the sun get a little too loud, and this guy sits in its pot like it just failed an entrance exam. My family laughs it off. You were like this as a kid too, upset over the smallest things.

If you look closely, it hasn’t actually lost anything. It just believes it’s lacking something. That’s what seeking validation feels like, most days.

There is a voice on the internet which says that you should do it for yourself. If you are happy then that’s enough. You don’t need external validation to be happy.

Umm, why?

Your therapist will say something similar. But that’s an idealistic way to live. It’s like eating boiled chicken and plain dal for their nutrition and pretending you don’t miss the taste. What is dal without its tadka? What is chicken without its masala?

Sure, bland food has its place. Khichdi is what you eat when your stomach’s given up on you and you need something gentle to put you back on your feet. But you don’t live on khichdi. You eat it to recover, not to stay there. That’s how I feel about doing things “for myself.” Fine for a bad week. Not something I would do on a regular basis.

Me when I don’t get validation. Source

That’s a boundary, really, a small one I drew without meaning to. And I like boundaries. Clean edges. A place where things stop.

Speaking of places where things stop, do you know the deepest point on Earth? The lowest boundary any living thing can reach? It’s the Mariana Trench in the Pacific ocean. I use that’s deeper than the Mariana Trench more than I probably should. It’s one of my favourite lines. But only I know the truth: there’s exactly one thing deeper than that trench, and it’s my thirst for validation.

I’m a numbers person. My subscriber count goes up, a post crosses a hundred likes, and it makes me happy, plainly and immediately. Writing is something I love and if there are quantifiable proofs which tell me I did a good job, I am not discarding it. Bring ‘em all.

Source

When it comes to a new essay. Every time I hit publish, the next few hours are full of excitement and data analysis. Who liked, who commented, who hasn’t read so far, especially for the readers I know read my work very regularly. If I don’t see their reaction/comment within a suitable time range, I often think what could they be doing at this hour other than reading my essay. Gmail isn’t down, there is no pandemic, I generally publish on Saturdays so it is not job either. Where are they? All of my overthinking module gets activated and I assume a lot of scenarios. But the moment they like, share, comment or subscribe to it I feel happy again.

Remember the scene from Lagaan when we won the match (unlike the recent performance of our men’s team. ugh) and it finally rains, how happy everyone is? You know who was the happiest? The soil beneath everyone, and I am that soil.

I soak up validation faster than the Huggies and Pampers of the world. I’m always dry and ready for more validation.

Never ever stop validating my efforts. Source

This validation is most needed in writing because it is very dear to me. I don't need it that much when I get ready and try to look decent. Okay maybe a little bit then as well. Or when I cook something. I just need someone to tell me how it was. Good, bad, if their tongue had an orgasm while eating it or if that was so bad that you vowed to never let me in the kitchen ever. If I am putting an effort and someone else is using it/consuming it, I really appreciate if they tell me how it was. It all goes into my personal NPS. It is definitely used for quality and training purposes. And the best part, all of it gets stored in a bottomless pit with an unlimited storage for which I don’t have to shell out a hundred and thirty rupees a month. (are you listening Google?)

Telling me not to like validation is a lot like telling me money can’t buy happiness. Sure. But it buys a lot of things adjacent to it. I recently bought a 5 car F1 scale model set by Hotwheels from Blinkit and I was happier than my daughter in that moment. Can you imagine a fully functioning adult happier than an almost one year old? Money makes life less sufferable. Someone in a tethered hut can absolutely be happy, I believe that. I’d still rather have a concrete roof over my head. That’s not a contradiction. That’s just a preference.

My last essay bombed. It did worse than many of my earliest pieces, even though my reach has grown a lot since then. And that hurt. I felt hurted. I’d genuinely liked writing that one, I was venting about a topic that always irks me, and I had more fun writing it than I’d had in a while. I thought people would read it and relate, maybe even appreciate it. Some kind souls did, but the responses were less than I am used to. I checked the likes and the stats more times than I’d like to admit, the same way you press a bruise just to confirm if it still hurts.

Nobody warns you that wanting validation also means occasionally sitting with the exact absence of it. But it didn’t stop me from writing the next one. I didn’t even stop wanting the next hundred likes. That’s the part I find strange about myself: the wanting survives the disappointment completely, like it never even registered the hit.

After every such incident, my mind goes straight to chhodo yaar, matar paneer par focus karte hain.

Writing is my exit. Humor is the shield I hold up on the way out. Every piece I put up gives me proof that I made something, and that alone makes me feel alive. I could keep every word to myself. There’s no shortage of pen and paper in this world. Notebooks and journals exist for exactly that. Those influencers with their pretty journals tempt you so much into it, but I chose a blog. A public one. So why would I pretend it doesn’t matter to me whether people read it and appreciate/don’t like it? I’m not the nonchalant one in this regard. Definitely didn’t turn into one after the word nonchalant became cool.

People who say they don’t write for validation, good for them, genuinely. But I don’t understand that if you’re putting something out into the open and then you say you do not need validation on it. What does that even mean? What kind of person does that? You made it public. You made it findable. If whether someone reads it or not was truly never a question for you, you surely had a journal for that. You didn’t need the internet.

To me, that’s the same as turning down the food your relative offers the first time you visit their house. You want it. Everyone at that table knows you want it. But the refusal is customary, a little performance of I’m fine, really, and it makes you feel appropriately nonchalant while your stomach quietly disagrees.

I don’t know why anyone does that, or how it feels to mean it. I like it when people like my work. I want the people I know and admire to like it too. It makes me happy.

However, my plant still hasn’t figured out that it never actually lost anything. Most days, neither have I.

But even then I don’t ask myself why I run after validation, the same way I don’t ask my wife why she chose me even after knowing me as a person for a long time.

Why dig a grave when you’re scared of what’s inside?

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Other essays from fellow writers on the theme ‘Validation’:

1. How it shapes us—Until it doesn't by Parul Kapoor

2. You are enough by Disha

3. What I make of what I make by Mansi Goel

4. The gentle violence of needing to be proven right by Sid Sharma

5. It’s like Fight Club; it’s you against the world by Apoorva Dua

6. Validation is a scam by Isha Jain

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