Ever Growing Ever Changing

So, your dream home is a two-floor palatial villa on the waterfront. You cannot imagine life without the latest Range Rover, Audi, or Mercedes Benz, whatever is trendy. Your closet is full to the brim with designer labels. You discovered you love to travel and you have made it your duty to take at least six overseas trips a year.  

Would all of this still matter to you if no one was watching?

With social media, it seems everyone is trying to keep up. The bar keeps getting raised. Your grandmother’s old wardrobe or closet is no longer good enough. You simply must have an entire showroom with glass doors. Travelling locally is no longer attractive. Only Jamaica or somewhere distant and “exotic” will fill the void (Do come to Jamaica, by the way, but only if you can do so debt-free.).

Yet, it seems to me that the current craze for luxury items and privileged experiences normally has less to do with a genuine appreciation for the finer things in life and more to do with how others view us. We have managed to outsource our decision-making on how we spend our time and money to other people, often people we do not know or those we may not even care for. Most of us have become puppets: performers controlled by our need for validation and the approval of others.

And it is not just in our financial decisions. The need to narrate every second of our lives on social media and trade our dignity for digital sympathy has become cringeworthy. Engagement is the goal, for money, yes, but it is also about attracting others who can relate, validate, and confirm that your perspective is acknowledged and is the objective truth.

Tale as Old as Time

Social media is relatively new, but no, the world has not gone newly mad.  The idolisation of approval has been a constant throughout human history. As far back as the 6^th century B.C., Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about people´s approval and you will be their prisoner.”

Here is what I have learned in over 40 years: human beings, including me, crave approval. We have an ancient and inherent need to be seen, loved, and affirmed and oftentimes, the lengths to which we go to achieve this can become destructive. When we recognise the dangers of shaping our entire lives based on the perspectives of others, we can then begin to cast off those unnecessary burdens. There is a place for conforming to societal mores and values and refraining from anti-social activity, of course. That is not what I am referring to here. I am talking about always making the choices that you think will make you popular and venerated, even if they do not align with who you truly are and what you actually desire.

My advice to you, if any of this resonates, is that you spend more time looking inward than you do looking at a screen. Get to know yourself better, without all the noise. Examine your own motives. Ask yourself: “Am I doing this because I genuinely enjoy it, or because I want to be seen doing it?” If you stripped away everyone else’s opinion, who would you actually want to be?

Here’s one fact that I believe will save you a lot of money and heartache: you were already created fearfully and wonderfully by God.  You were validated and valuable the moment you took your first breath. Are you saying you know something God doesn’t?