“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” — Jeremiah 2:13
We don’t bow to statues of Baal anymore. We have subtler, thirstier gods. I know, because yesterday, I built an altar to one.
I published my first article on Medium. Then I did what we all do: I refreshed. And refreshed. My heartbeat synced to the loading icon. When the number of subscriber flickered from zero to one, a wave of pure, undiluted relief washed through me. It felt like water in a desert. I was seen. I was validated.
In that moment, I became a perfect subject in a neuroscience lab. My brain, perceiving a tiny scrap of social acceptance, released a shot of dopamine into its reward pathways. It’s the same chemical currency as a slot machine win, a line of cocaine, a “like” on a thirst trap. Evolution wired us to crave tribe; technology turned that wiring into a slot machine we carry in our pockets.
In the quiet after that little hit, a lyric from “Barragán Lighting” by Larry June played in my head like a whispered intervention: “Y’all too worried ‘bout bein’ validated.”
Jeremiah called it a broken cistern. Science calls it a dysfunctional reward loop. Larry June calls it being worried. I sat there, feeling all three truths at once. That single digital flicker wasn’t a milestone; it was a mirror. It showed me my own reflection in the dashboard’s glow, revealing a thirst I hadn’t named.
Psychologists call this an external locus of control. It’s when your sense of worth is governed by forces outside yourself, algorithms, opinions, metrics. It’s linked to higher anxiety and depression and a life spent chasing the next hit of “proof.” I was pouring my sense of worth into a digital cistern I could not control, watching it drain instantly, desperate for the next drop.
So this is my act of digging a new well.
This article is the first bucket of water drawn from a different source. I am not writing for the witness. I am writing for the work itself. The validation must come from the doing, not the done. From the integrity of the thought, not its reception.
The architect Luis Barragán designed rooms where light itself was the subject, creating sanctuaries of profound calm. I cannot build with his stone, but I can choose my light. I can choose the steady, warm glow of a task done with focus over the frantic, blue strobe of a notifications tab.
From today, I am learning. The click of “Publish” is not a request for validation; it is the validation. It is the act of release, of letting the thought belong to the silence.
I will not refresh the stats. I will not hunt for new followers. I will not confuse applause with oxygen.
Our worth is never a number. It is the quiet light you build when you stop feeding thirsty gods and learn to dwell in the warmth of your own attention.
The work is the well.
I am putting down the empty cup.
