thorns
vanity of vanities
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Thread Soundtrack:
Humans have an inherent need for love and validation, a drive deeply rooted in our biology and psychology. As social creatures, our survival historically depended on forming and maintaining close bonds within our communities. Love, in this context, can be seen as a mechanism for securing those bonds, ensuring cooperation and mutual support. While love is often romanticized as a powerful, transformative force ("if you missed teen love it's over" type argument), it can also be understood as a psychological need, a way to secure a sense of belonging and safety in a void world.
Validation operates similarly. It is a natural human desire to feel valued and recognized by others. From an evolutionary perspective, being valued by others within a social group could mean better access to resources, protection, and opportunities for reproduction. On a psychological level, validation helps to affirm our self-worth and provides strenght against the existential anxiety that comes from confronting our mortality.
Even the most good-looking and seemingly successful people are not immune to these needs. Despite their appearance of confidence and having it all, they often struggle with insecurities driven by the same fundamental fears and desires as everyone else. No matter how much external success you achieve, whether through physical attractiveness, wealth, or status, the need for validation persists. This is because validation is not a one-time fix; it requires constant refill. The satisfaction it provides is temporary, leading to a cycle where individuals seek more and more validation to maintain their sense of self-worth.
This cycle can lead to a reliance on hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure as a way to temporarily fill the void. However, the issue with hedonism is that it is inherently short-lived. The pleasure derived from validation, like a quick dopamine hit, fades quickly, leaving one craving more. Over time, the effectiveness of these pleasures diminishes, leading to a situation where more is required to achieve the same level of satisfaction. This can result in a never-ending pursuit that ultimately fails to provide lasting fulfillment.
The reality is that no amount of external validation can fully address the deeper existential questions that drive these behaviors. It's a common experience, and many people find themselves caught in this cycle at some point in their lives.
Why you should do things from love, not for love (and why it's so fucking difficult to do so):
Acting from love means embracing your own inner strengths and weaknesses, expressing your will and desires without needing approval or validation from others. It’s about creating your own values, standing by them, and finding fulfillment in the act of giving and creating, not in the hope of receiving something in return. But this is difficult because it goes against our conditioning and the need for validation. It requires you to break free from the expectations and judgments of others, to be truly independent in your actions. It demands a level of self-awareness and courage that most people shy away from because it’s easier, safer, to seek love than to give it without expecting anything back. Doing things from love is an act of self-overcoming, a way to rise above the emptiness and fear that drives most people’s actions. It’s about being the creator of your own life, rather than a passive participant in someone else’s.
This may be the path for a peaceful existence, or may be not. In the end, we all spawned here without requesting to. It's your life, and you choose what to do with it.
Yoooo, Keep Writing Essays
-thorns
