Signagi, Republic of Georgia
I stand eye to eye with a granite ghost. A man’s head and shoulders emerge from a 6 foot block of white granite to show a strong, resolute face. The proud owner of this eternal dirt plot spared no expense in his death: polished off-white stone forms a 12 foot square, a hand chiseled bench sits centered upon the sculpture which is directly anterior to his large epitaph. What does this man want me to know, or better yet, what would he have me believe of him? The voice of insecurity cried out from beyond the limitations of gravity bound consciousness: “Admire me.” Validation sought from the grave, the desire to be perceived as rich, influential and noteworthy. That statue stood not for the deceased, the statue stood for me.
I stroll down the shaded graveyard a short distance and come to another burial site: damp, bland, grey and square containing 6 bodies. There’s a feeling that death is still clinging to the fallen leaves lying on the surface of the grave; there’s debris all inside the perimeter, a small sapling is growing in the corner and the portrayals of the deceased have fallen from the shared headstone. Their vignette portraits simply propped up beneath the worn out adhesive. It looks cold and forgotten. As I look at the gravesite, I find myself ruminating on how much I would rather not be buried here. Then again, why would it matter?…
Where to Rot?
I stood at the grave in Georgia for quite some time. Does it really matter where I rot? Why would I rather be buried beneath a carved rock that bears my resemblance? The first grave was noticeable, decorated with fresh flowers and in general, well taken care of. Ah, perhaps therein lies a key. Noone seemed to care for the neglected grave… I guess I would like for others to remember me as important, influential and noteworthy. I began considering how many statues I personally have built for others to admire in my life. Trip exploring Central Asia? Statue. Commercial fishing in Alaska? Statue. Long, sappy Facebook post about pursuing dreams complete with an inspiring picture and accompanying hashtags… yes, a very large, poorly sculpted statue. Those adventures were objectives I genuinely wanted to complete and I have great memories from those experiences. Yet, they were simultaneously tainted by my desire to be perceived as strong in areas I felt deficient in. In these endeavors, I sought a sense of identity and validation from people whose opinion had little to no impact on my life. Look at my statues. Admire my achievements. A constant feedback loop begins: I strive for an achievement, I receive or don’t receive validation, which in either case, would leave me with a desire to gain more validation. Rinse, repeat. Once I slid this behavior pattern under a microscope, I found I sought validation from all sorts of people: total strangers, people I didn’t like, figments of my imagination and people that have been dead for a long time. The brain is a strange thing, man.
Why do we strive for acceptance?
To look at the need for social approval from an anthropological viewpoint reveals the brilliance of our species’ genetic ingenuity. We’ve been hardwired through millions of years of genetic conditioning to fit within a tribe or community as an adaptive survival mechanism. As a rough timestamp for human association, the Homo Habilis began creating rudimentary tools around 2.3 million years ago. (1) So roughly 2,300,000 years (count ’em) of social conditioning resulted in our dependence on each other as our best defense against extinction. The typical hunter gatherer band is estimated to have operated in groups of 30-50 people (2) which would result in close bonds being formed for the completion of common goals. Garnering the approval, or at least toleration, of a few dozen people could mean the difference between survival or starvation.
“The intimate communities fulfilled the emotional needs of their members and were essential for everyone’s survival and welfare. In the last two centuries, the intimate communities have withered, leaving imagined communities to fill in the emotional vacuum.” -Yuval Noah Harari
To shirk the mantle of social acceptance could result in expulsion from the tribe. In many cases, a solitary exile meant a highly decreased chance of survival. With the ability to conform to a group, we statistically increased our chances of survival. Inversely, when we live in a state of isolation, humans experience a rapid deterioration of health: higher levels of perceived stress, increased risk of suicide, increased levels of cortisol, higher blood pressure and a reduction in restorative sleep. (3) (4) None of this is surprising. Think of a time when you moved to a new city and lacked any social contacts. It’s a bummer right? While our social interdependence has certainly waned in the last couple centuries, the biological motivation for group cohesion still exists in the land of curated online lives and unknown next door neighbors.
With that evolutionary drive pushing us forward, we subconsciously adapt to ensure our social survival. We recognize how others perceive us in a social interaction and calibrate as needed. Ideally, we successfully do this multiple times a day. The issue arises when we base the large object of our self esteem upon the small fulcrum of another person’s appraisal of our value. I would argue that a large number of people unknowingly do this every day. Not you? Excellent, I’m stoked for you. Just out of curiosity, do you ever embellish stories to make your life seem more interesting? What does your social media accounts (self promotion and validation seeking behavior at it’s finest) look like? How do you handle being rejected by someone you admire? When was the last time you talked badly about someone to build yourself up? How do you respond when you get a poor quarterly review from your boss? If you answer those honestly, there’s a high chance of some validation seeking behaviors in there.
Using someone else’s positive evaluation to cement our own positive view of ourselves is a perpetual cycle of futility that can continue for decades if not a lifetime. Not only is this a shitty way to live but it’s dishonest to who we are as individuals. The early stages of a romantic relationship is an appropriate example of this dishonesty; we often contrive a character that is untenable to maintain over the long term in order to impress the person we’re interested in. In our various contrivances to present ourselves as desirable, we convince a person to love a caricature of who we truly are. But they love the caricature we’ve created, not the true subject of the painting. Any love, validation or admiration is given to the caricature, not you. Owning the totality of who we are as individuals ends that cycle of futility and allows us to live a more honest existence.
Staring Contests
For myself, I found that I heavily based my self worth upon the approval of others. I definitely wouldn’t recommend that path. Strangely enough, my desire for validation from external sources, a biological drive, led to a deep pit of self hatred. It was common for me to berate myself for a small mistake in a way I would never consider speaking to another person. I settled for standards far beneath my potential in multiple aspects of my life. I punched myself in the face til I cracked teeth (a rather awkward conversation with the dentist). The more interesting episodes found me standing in the restroom of a bar, slightly drunk, staring into the mirror. I would step to the sink to wash my hands and find myself looking into my reflection with a genuine hatred of the man I saw. Whoever inhabited the strange tunnels of my pupils felt like a violent animal in a cage. I despised what I believed to be a failure of a man. Who is this worthless fool in front of me? All that I could see was my own shortcomings and insecurities. Teeth grinding, I would sit with that fury and feel the chasm open further between who I believed myself to be and the repressed qualities of myself that rarely saw the light of day. Useless, incompetent and weak. Thoughts given to me by broken people operating in a fractured system. Over and over I heard those words cycle through my mind. Someone walks into the bathroom, my gaze breaks and I return to a group of people as easy going, laid back Mikey. Maybe that’s a strange thing that seldom happens to other people, but if I experience those feelings then I assume other people do as well.
We all have things to improve upon and ways that we can create a better version of the animal in the mirror. Mentally sabotaging ourselves is no way to begin that process though. I certainly have no business basing the entirety of my own self worth off another equally flawed human’s perception of me. I strive to keep that behavior out of my life because I recognize how deeply it can affect the other areas of my day to day existence.
Life goes well, I like who I am and where I’m at. There’s a couple different factors that likely contributed to that sense of self loathing but they’re not terribly important. What is actually important, is how to alter that reoccurring pattern. The few influential actions that initially come to mind for myself were experimenting with psychedelics, cutting out negative self talk and attempting to embrace the shadow side of the personality. Most importantly, I began constantly monitoring my interactions for validation seeking behaviors. When I found myself actively seeking someone’s approval, I would pattern disrupt by simply thinking to myself, “You’re enough, man”. Because I am, and you are too.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
―
Maybe you struggle with this kind of thinking. Maybe you don’t. For myself this was the first glaring obstacle in finding more peace in my own life. To live honestly is what I’m striving for, to allow myself to believe that I’m worthy of the good things that have come my way and that my potential for excellence is only inhibited by my inability to allow myself to achieve it. I’m not useless. I’m not weak. I’m not incompetent. In a lot of ways, I’m a pretty alright dude. It sounds cheesy, but you gotta show yourself some compassion. Especially if you’re trying to share that compassion and love with others and pursue your own highest potential in life. Those graves outside Signagi held a message, this is me trying to share their message. If nothing else, maybe it will provoke some thought, hopefully it points to a path of deeper inner peace and empathy. Leave the validation seeking behaviors behind before you get to the grave, the days of the living are far better without ’em.
Thanks for Reading,
-Mikey
Blue Collar Travel 