Wounded children run the world. They preach and they entertain, explode and rage to be seen, a desperate attempt to be connected. When I look at all the "leaders", the people who love being on camera, I see children deprived of a base love, a base unconditional acceptance, trying desperately to get it back. We are lucky, many times, for these desperate wounded children. They become the most extraordinary and moving adults. They move us because they need us and as much as they take from us, of our television and radio time, or our money, they are the most needy of all. Because each time they speak they are desperate for our attention. They are seeking our approval, our acceptance. And it isn't so much what they say that is meaningful but the reason why they say anything at all. They say it to be heard. They have to be heard. They have to be seen. For all the crowds and applause are momentarily making up for the thing they lack- love. These are the wounded children who were not cradled long enough. The ones who didn't know their father, or mother, or could never be good enough for them. These are the desperate wounded children that have leveled mountains and traversed diversity and dissonance in search of that simple but evasive necessity- acceptance. They want to be loved. And so they learn to be worthy of the love, admiration, of many. They study and strive and risk and finally soar so they can prove they are worthy of the love that evaded them. But as beautiful as we see them, as magnificent as they become, they remain hollow inside. It's that hollow inside that drives them higher, maybe too high. These wounded children achieve great things. The slight is they never achieve what they've desired for so long- to be loved. To be accepted by the person who put it into their heads that they were not good enough. At heart they will always believe they are not good enough.
Our world is run by wounded children.