There are now more than seven billion people on this earth and each one of us feels that he or she is the centre of the universe. That accounts for most of the problems we have in the world, in our neighbourhoods and in our families. And no one’s to blame for this, save God perhaps, for making us this way. Each of us is created in the image and likeness of God, meaning that each of us holds within a divine spark, a piece of infinity and an ingrained knowledge of that unique dignity. We are infinite souls inside a finite world. To paraphrase St Augustine, we are made for the divine and our hearts aren’t just dissatisfied until they rest there again, they’re also grandiose along the journey, enflamed by their own uniqueness and dignity. God has made everything beautiful in its own season, Ecclesiastes tells us, but God has put timelessness into the human heart so that we are out of sync with the seasons from beginning to end. We’re overcharged for this planet, and we know it. Moreover, that sense of specialness lies at the centre of our awareness: I think, therefore I am: Descartes was right – the only thing we can be absolutely sure of is that we exist and that our own thoughts and feelings are real. We may be dreaming everything else. We awake to self-consciousness aware of our specialness, frustrated by the fact that the world cannot give us what we crave, and insufficiently aware of the fact that everyone else on this earth is also equally unique and special.