Don't frown because you never know who's falling in love with your smile.
-- Xandra Moss, age 13
That quote is from the book "Tommy Transit's Bus Tales" by Tom Tompkins and Michele Hall. It pretty much sums up Tommy's mission in life, validating everyone he meets, finding ways to make each of us feel special, appreciated, visible, and validated.
I was once told, by a trained psychologist, that I should not require or expect validation from others, rather I should learn to self validate. Fair enough, that is sage advice, and I practice it when I can.
The problem with that advice is that life, our world, society can be incredibly invaliding at times. Every time I get into a phone menu system I feel dehumanized, my humanity is invalidated. I feel like I am treated like a robot, relegated to follow some script some junior programmer has concocted for me, who in turn was probably invalidated by his or her boss or company. To be sure, modern corporations, capitalism and consumerism are just machines that take human beings as input, and grind us up to extract profit for the small minority controlling the machines.
Even worse than phone menu systems are the ubiquity of web sites and web applications on the cloud that have automated the process of extracting profit from consumers, largely in a dehumanizing and invalidating way. I say this not as a lament, but as an expert option, for I am a software developer too, who has taught user interface design in a third year university course. I know with confidence that we can do better, we certainly know how to do better, we simply choose not to do better.
Don't even get me started on politics; one of the most invalidating achievements of the new millenium.
We owe it to ourselves to want validation, we need it, we deserve it.
I was sitting in the Humming Bird Pub, on Galiano Island, one night having a short philosophical conversation with my new friend Andrea. I was commenting on the TV show Glee, how I liked it because it taught more than just tolerating each other, it taught accepting each other. Andrea picked up on that sentiment and said "yes, tolerance is not enough, we can do better than that, and we should."
The next night I was back in the pub watching Andrea and her partner Auto play another set of music - they are very talented. Tom, who I met the night before, walks over and says to me "Are you here again? We're going to have to get you a membership." He found some time from his busy schedule to sit down and chat with me, and handed me a copy of his book. This was his personal copy, full of editorial notes, hand written in pencil. WOW - what a trusting guy. While he was gone on his next bus run, I manage to read the first quarter of the book. Much of the time I was in stitches, laughing wholeheartedly -- all of the time I was smiling. When he got back, I asked Tommy if they carried the book in the Galiano Book Store. He said "better than that, I have a couple of copies in my car." I bought both copies.
Since that amazing weekend on Galiano a lot of great stuff has happened in my life. More recently Andrea and Auto were in Vancouver playing another gig, and I went down with a couple of friends to see their show. They had a lot of their friends there too - it was a pretty happy room. I stayed late, and was privileged to get invited to a party the next night.
I got to the party early, and enjoyed a nice chat with early comers. By about 10:00 PM it became apparent that this was no normal party, as many of the people there are very talented music artists, and before long I found myself in heaven listening to one performance after another. From time to time I stepped outside my rapture to observe, and what I saw was amazing. This crowd was warm, welcoming, touchy-feely, huggy-kissy, happy, vibrant, laughing - but most importantly, they were validating.
In addition to actively validating me, and each other, I realize that the arts in general are one of the most validating agencies we have. Music and poetry speaks to our souls, validating our dreams and emotions. Visual arts validate those ineffable truths we all hold, making use feel connected to each other, connected to the inner spirit of the artist, leaving us to wonder how the artist can read our minds and souls too. And then there is dance: using movement to create an emotion.
Quite some time ago I told myself I needed to bring more art and artists into my life, but it was just a feeling, a desire, it felt right. I finally realized what I was doing, I was exposing myself to validation, and creating opportunities for it. The world will always be there with dehumanizing voice menus and frustrating web forms, and I am pretty good at self validating when I need to, but validation is out there everywhere if we look for it, learn how to see it -- more importantly, learn how to create it, give it, share it.
And then there is Tommy, who is also a gifted artist - the art of the compliment and positive quip. He taught me that I too can offer people validation. I am no angel, and I have been known to cast a few invalidating remarks around when the machinery of invalidation gets me down. A little repenting goes a long way.
There is simply no greater blessing in life than that moment when you realized you have made someone else's moment, day, week.
Andrea is right, we can do better; we can do better than tolerance, we can even do better than acceptance, we can validate each other and ourselves.
