I tell no-one any story but his own.

It's frightening how desperately we crave acknowledgement, isn't it?

This deep-seated, very human need for recognition and validation has become more evident in the last decade (I think) thanks to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace - well, the advent of the Internet in general. There are billions of daily pleas that go out into that interstitial space, begging someone to respond.

Where does this craving come from? I think it stems less from a desire to be recognized and more from an emptiness. It's been called a "God-shaped hole." 

"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles...They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator." (Romans 1)

What if that human-shaped idol wasn't someone else, but ourselves? Idolatry meets narcissism.

Then we'd live in a world where everyone was out for Number One, was concerned with how they looked and how they felt and what they wanted, and was determined to satisfy themselves. A world where the other was tossed aside in favor of self, a world littered with "others"... oh, wait. We do live in that world.

Granted, there are kind souls and do-gooders and (dare I say it?) church people that bring a little light to such an oppressive picture. But they are (from what I can tell) spurred on by guilty consciences. And that motivation for helping others only effects limited change.

I always come back to C.S. Lewis: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

On an entirely separate tack: Re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia (after a 15 year absence), this time in chronological order. I'm brought to tears by how meaningful and dense the symbolism is in those books. I think I would never have been able to appreciate it as a child.