Have you ever heard someone on a stage or in the office or the classroom doing the work, but he’s simultaneously searching for someone to tell him how good, accomplished, skillful, or excellent he is? It’s as if he’s searching for applause in order to keep going you can sometimes see it in their eyes, this deeply unfulfilled sense that they are incomplete, that they need the strokes and affirmation of others to be content…
If you are looking for a particular response to bring you joy, that response may never come.
- Rob Bell, How To Be Here, p. 147