The Validation

The Validation

Nov 2, 2021 | Social Media

There is something deeply disturbing about the validation required by many today.

Did we eat the right food, say the right thing, buy the right product, look good doing it?

While not completely worthless–it is very rare when something can be designated in such a manner–social media is pretty close. Do we really need to say things to an audience of people that we for the most part do not know or honestly even care about?

Do you really care about Roger Jones, that dude you never talked to in 4th through 12th grade, but now 20 years later like each other’s posts about grilled cheese and babies?

Admittedly, there must be something biological that occurs when we post snippets of our lives on social media platforms. It sort of feels good. Yeah, our lives rock, our kids are too cute, our knowledge is too stellar.

It is crap. It really is a bunch of crap. There is something to be said for living within one’s own mind and heart and the parameters of a life you created with your own hands. A life that can be turned off or erased, which is entirely the case with social media, is not real.

The time we spend updating people we do not know, care about, or possible even like, can perhaps better be spent on the people with whom we work, love, or trying to love, etc.

There is an emptiness to social media, a puffing up of the proverbial chest, a step back into our primordial minds in which we must have sought validation wherever we could.

Validation cannot be bought, sold, or offered through video screens. Rather, it is an experience inside one’s mind, earned through breathing, letting go, crying, making mistakes, quitting jobs, landing them, giving birth, saying goodbye, falling down and getting up. 

Social media validates itself–that is all it does. It validates technology and the sadness we feel, but rarely express…

The Answers

The Answers

Mar 26, 2020 | Millennials

We have all seen it, right? The look on a millennial’s face when he or she discovers THE answer on their phone.

They are surrounded by individuals who experience the same thing, and these moments of bliss are captured and disseminated through social media channels at nearly warp speed.

Isn’t it natural, though, for all younger people to feel as if they have the answers? The difference now is that younger generations are able to capture these moments with technology and promote them. Might Baby Boomers have experienced such things, too?

What will happen when today’s younger generations grow older and time seems less infinite? There is something deeply disturbing about the march of time. It goes on without us, and that reality is obvious the older we get and the more we see change, yet stay the same.

Do millennials have the answers to life’s mysteries? Media coverage seems to suggest they know something profound. However, might it be that millennials know technology better than older generations? They know how to use technology, but that knowledge seems to bleed into the arena of life itself, which is profoundly problematic.

Some answers are known by each generation, but the question becomes what kind of answers are they? Can a 29 year old advise a 60 year old on the complexities and nuances of life? Maybe. Do millennials fundamentally understand aspects of life? No way. Technology, however, provides photos and videos of them in that sort of nirvana that only exists for younger folks.

As we age, the excitement of what we think we know is tempered by the experiences that make up entire decades of what we do not know. What would it look like on social media to see pictures of 85 year olds staring at each other in rapture and clicking buttons? We would surmise they have dementia? After all, what can older folks know, right?

What those who are older know, however, cannot be measured by Google analytics or captured in an online review of a local vegetarian bistro. Rather, it is the actual content of a life that has been lived and all the detours and nuances that result from the pain, loss, tragedy and triumph of existence.

Do millennials have the answers? Sure, they are exuberant and bring fresh perspectives to age-old human foibles. Have they experienced decades worth of life and loss? No, they have not.

Ask a 25 year old what is life, and he or she will look toward the future. Ask a 50 year old the same question, and he or she will turn around and look back…