I think some of the blame goes to well-meaning child
rearing where we tell every kid that she is special and that she deserves to have whatever her heart desires. Every child gets a trophy just for showing up. Because we’re
all special.
Anyhow, I was thinking about all of that this past week as
my wife and I listened to an audio presentation of C. S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy. It’s a tale of a
slave boy who runs away “to Narnia and the North.” And one of his companions is Bree, a talking horse who was born in Narnia, but was captured and enslaved
while still a foal. Though Bree has had a career as a war horse, he never
revealed to his masters that he was a free-born Narnian who could talk.
