In the theatre of flesh and nerve there exists a compulsion stranger than the need for food or warmth: the hunger to matter. It is not a mere desire, but an itch sewn into the marrow, whispering that to be unseen is to be dead.

Behold the infant’s cry! It is a shrill, senseless, primordial noise. Yet it is a demand: Look upon me, or I am nothing. And from that first scream to the final gasp, a human stumbles through rituals of recognition, trading tokens of meaning like beggars with empty bowls. The priest seeks salvation not for the soul, but for its acknowledgment. The soldier bleeds not only for country, but so his name might be chiselled upon a stone that others must read.

Importance, then, is not a virtue, but a parasite: a glistening worm curled round the spine, feasting on glances, nods, and the shallow sacraments of social memory. One is not content to be; one must be beheld. Not to witness, but to be witnessed. Not to live, but to cast a shadow in the minds of others.

Even the gods, those swollen metaphors that crawl through the mythic psyche, require worship. What is divinity without the trembling eye of the devotee? A void howling into a deeper void.

In this, we see the horror: that meaning is not within us, but reflected. It is a phantasm sustained by the gaze of the other. Strip away the watchers, and we dissolve. We are not beings, but apparitions propped up by attention. This is the monstrous irony: we ache to be seen, but the self we offer is only a mask stitched together from others’ perceptions.

Thus, the need to feel important is not noble, but necrotic. A rot in the soul that smells of old applause and forgotten names. And yet, without it, the human collapses into dust. Not dead, but never born.