Hello, I am Ego

Hello Ego, good to meet you. Again.  

We’ve met before haven’t we? I’m sure of it. You’ve always been there, so often in fact, that I mistake you for a friend. So often I mistake you for me. 

You do a clever impression of me, by the way. Your voice, your accent, the expressions and hand waving you conjure whenever I hear you in my head. You disguise your voice as my thoughts and I accept them freely. 

That’s how you’ve escaped my gaze this whole time. Lurking ever present in those dark corners of the mind. 

But I see you now, and there’s no hiding from the spotlight I’m shining on you.

I used to think you were mere narcissism. Arrogant and fragile in your sensitivities. Bragging and vain. 

But that’s not how you see yourself is it? You guard the borders of ‘me’ and you believe unshakably this wall you’ve drawn between us and the outside world must be guarded with vigilance. 

I think you’re the jailor, you think you’re the protector. I think you’re a vigilante, you think you’re justice. 

I know now you’re bigger than vanity, too clever to be loud and boastful. It’s your subtlety, your endurance I admire most. You wait for when I’m distracted and weak to slip me your distorted little notes. You find a small toehold, then grasp tighter, grow louder. You start screaming, barking, whinging. 

The subtlety is lost but I’m too swept up in the rip current to question if it’s true.

You persist and I try to shush you. Sometimes it works, but only for seconds. Minutes at most. 

You come straight back with a quip, a rebuttal, a seed of doubt. You ask me to fill my emptiness with self-pity and loathing. Anger at others, ingratitude for the world, dread for the future. You want to make me feel small so that I retract. 

It’s not your fault. You only want me to be safe. You think this is the best way. And small things in cradles are easier to protect after all. 

But even small things need space to grow. Life cannot be stifled or confined. This is inertia, this is slow death. I shush you again, and you wait slyly for my defenses to wear down. You bide your time for the next drop of poison in my ear. You seem more patient than me, more strategic. 

It shouldn’t be this way. I shouldn’t be playing this chess game at all. I shouldn’t be fighting you, feeling impatient with you. I shouldn’t be blocking you, pushing you out, judging you, getting angry with you. That’s your province. 

Your whole agenda is to build a wall around me, to draw a circle and call what’s inside ‘me’ and what’s outside ‘other’. To tell me that everything outside that circle is hostile and everything inside is precious and safe.  

Am I not doing the same thing right now? I’m drawing a circle inside my circle, I’m treating you as hostile, and myself as precious. 

I’m dwelling on your messages, I’m judging your thoughts, stewing on them with agitation. Tossing and turning over them at night when I should be sleeping. Shaking them convulsively out of my head when I’m driving or doing the dishes. 

This is a problem. 

I don’t want to be inside this circle with you, trapped in this persona of our own invention. I long to be outside, sharing freely with the world. Drifting between perspectives, feeling empathy and gratitude with every breath I take. Safe from the suffering of my own making.  

Yet I am doing to you what I hate you for. I fight you, I judge you. As I fight and judge the world. I am apart from others but I am not apart from you.  

Because I am you. 

We are Ego. 

And we are many. 

So many voices bubbling up all at once, competing for attention, seeking a place in the hierarchy of dominant thoughts. This illusion of the self. One trial by combat followed by another. 

We are wrestling with each other to make ourselves feel big, then small, then big again. Flipping from dominance to submission, convinced of our own fleeting importance. 

We are the left fist and the right fist pushing futilely against each other. Knuckles chafing, wrists quivering, biceps ripping, shoulders knotting up. Wondering why our minds feel so exhausted, our existence so hollow.

Never seeing the underlying truth – that we are creating our own struggle, our own pain. Never seeing the obvious solution, how to end this self-infliction. 

Then the gentle breeze washes over us, and whispers, 

“Why don’t you just stop pushing, try letting go. Doesn’t that feel better?” 

We all put our hands down at the same time and relief consumes us. The wind soothes us, lulls us to a gentle swaying.

“There, there, little ones, rest your busy little brains. Enough fussing for today, you are safe, you are special. Sleep.” 

The walls go down, and the outside world envelops us with light. The edges of the world are expanding, the separation from mind to mind fades. 

There is no ‘I’ and there is no ‘them’. 

We no longer care about borders or possession or identity. We only wish to share deeply. To breathe the world and hold it inside, to drink from the bowl of common perspective. Settled in the quiet content that all is as it should be. 

Eternally.