The Search for Validation

Have you ever walked away from a conversation, only to find yourself replaying it hours later? Wondering if you spoke too much, sounded foolish or rude, or left the wrong impression. It's curious how someone else's opinion can continue living inside our mind long after they've moved on with their day. A single compliment can stay with us for hours. Sometimes, a careless remark stays with us for days. We tell ourselves we've forgotten it, but every now and then it quietly returns.

Perhaps we've all done it in one way or another. As children, we searched our parents' faces for approval. At school, we waited for praise from our teachers. As adults, the faces changed - friends, colleagues, partners, even strangers, but the search remained surprisingly familiar. 

I sometimes wonder if our search for validation begins much earlier than we realize. A child runs towards a parent holding a drawing, not because it is extraordinary, but because they're waiting for a smile. That look which quietly says, I see you. Perhaps that is one of the first moments we learn that being seen feels good. And perhaps, without noticing, we spend the rest of our lives looking for that same look in different faces.

I've caught myself doing it too. Not often, but often enough to notice the pattern. Every time, I find myself asking the same question: why does it matter so much? Why can one kind word make us feel lighter, while one careless remark lingers for days? Perhaps because, beneath our search for appreciation, we are quietly asking a much deeper question, one that no one else can really answer for us.

WHO AM I ?

Some people search for that answer through success. Others through being helpful. Some try to become the person everyone likes, while others quietly avoid disappointing anyone. Others spend years trying to be indispensable.  The paths are different, but the longing underneath feels remarkably similar. We hope that if enough people approve of us, we'll finally feel certain about ourselves.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad takes us in a completely different direction. Rather than telling us who we are, it begins removing everything we are not. "Neti, Neti"—"Not this, not this." Not your profession. Not your achievements. Not your failures. Not your reputation. Not even the version of you that exists in someone else's mind.  It is less interested in adding another identity and more interested in uncovering what remains when all borrowed identities fall away.

I've always found that strangely comforting. The sages, the yogis weren't asking us to become someone better or more impressive. They were simply inviting us to stop confusing ourselves with the labels we've collected over the years. The search wasn't about adding another label. It was about gently letting go of the ones that never truly belonged to us. 

That's why validation never seems to satisfy us for very long. It feels good to be appreciated, there is nothing wrong with that. We all want to be seen. But appreciation can only tell us what someone else thinks of us. It cannot answer the quieter question we've been carrying all along - WHO AM I ?

Maybe that's why the search can feel endless.

We've been looking for ourselves in places where we could only ever be seen... never truly found.