who's approval are YOU seeking?

For I certainly am, looking for validation, for pleasing, for that elusive final stamp of approval. But who's approval is it that is driving me on to destinations unknown and scenes unfamiliar? Deep within us - poeple like me - are subconcious terrains unexplored and regions foriegn; some incident in our past has triggered an unquencable quest for being accepted as 'good', 'responsible', 'morally upright', and in every sense virtuous and in simple words perfect by those who are around us. These 'others' can be anyone in particular or the world in general or is it? Can it also be the person inside us, the I in me?

I don't know about you, but I am my biggest critic. I am just not good enough for myself, whatever I do or have done falls below the mark, for I think, nay I believe I could do much better. And it is this eternal longing for reaching some unapproachable pinnacle which sows the seeds of discontent. I feel lonely on a lonesome road. Road to perfection is never friendly, nor socialable, not because others aren't on it, but their paths never cross. What is it that drives us on? who are we ultimatley trying to please and why? I may sound hugely Fruedian in saying this but I feel it is our parent's consent, their recognition of us as someone other than their children, and of being their children who are exempalary by all standards is what we are after.

Dreams that show me failing my exam, nightmares of not being able to climb stairs, of ladders crumbling under me, of my father being upset with me and so on..... this perpetual fear of not doing the right thing, of not having performed up to the level of expectation, of displeasing, of somehow creating an air of displeasure. I am the harbinger of bad news, of heads shaking from left to right, and then back again the opposite way.

It has been a lifetime of trying, of endlessly endeavoring to do things that I even don't know for whose benefit they are to taken up and triumped over. I am tired and I am weary for whenever I see myself through the eyes of others I don't like myself much.