Is It Love or Validation? Mind picks words in a certain way. When we think about those words, we get an idea of them - the idea passed on to us by the society around us through content consumed over centuries. Words carry the weight of collective imagination. So when we think about love, our mind doesn’t just think, it recalls an inherited picture - a beautiful partner giving us their full attention, smiling like we’re the only one in the world. That image comes so effortlessly because we’ve been fed it over and over again through movies, songs, books, and stories told by others who also wanted to believe in that same image. But if we look at this projection carefully,we begin to see something uncomfortable. The mind doesn’t care much about love itself - it simply wants someone to act in a way that makes us feel good. That act could be anything - checking up on us, saying the right words, giving us time, presence, praise. The mind seeks attention and frames it as love. And we end up chasing that attention our whole life, calling it love. We start equating being noticed with being loved. The moment that attention starts to divide, when more people enter the family or responsibilities increase, the illusion of love begins to fade. We feel like the other person doesn’t love us anymore, like something important has slipped away. But in reality, nothing was taken from us. The truth is, love was never supposed to be an act of validation. It was never meant to be a test we constantly pass or fail. It was never meant to be a confirmation of whether someone cared or not. It was never supposed to be about changing ourselves just to fit into the ideal template of love between couples - a template built from someone else’s longing and someone else’s need for certainty. We force ourselves into this idea of love again and again, losing pieces of who we are in the process. We try to fit into a model reinforced by a few minds who were also seeking validation for their idea of love. We mimic their stories, we measure our emotions against theirs, and somewhere along the way we forget to feel what’s truly ours. We lose our lives trying to validate those stories, that content, that imagination, while missing out on the real love that may already be present. The kind of love that doesn’t look like the movies, doesn’t speak in big words, doesn’t ask for applause. The love from partners we never identified. Partners who didn’t fit into the widely accepted template of love. Partners who never asked for validation from us, but we were too distracted, too conditioned, too blind to notice. And by the time we do realise it, those partners become just a memory. A faded photograph in our mind. A voice we once knew. A presence we no longer feel. We are left to live in a version of life where we keep pretending to be loved, but deep down we know we’re not. And it’s difficult to accept that. It’s a truth too heavy to sit with, so we turn away. And maybe that’s what we’ve always done - turned away from the real thing while chasing the image. So let it be.