Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Watch That Ego! Rational Response to Innate Egomania?

On one hand we're tiny, truly insignificant.  Even when restricting our significance measurement to the whole of the human race, or the whole country (whichever country you happen to be in), or even, the whole town.  This purposefully excludes huge concepts like the solar system or the universe, or all of time.

Let's just say it plain.  As individuals, we don't matter that much.  We don't.  I'm not trying to etch it into wood or marble as my forearm musculature ripples in out-sized pornographic display.  No, I'm saying it simply.  We're pretty small.

We often think we matter much more than we do, though.  And that's a very important thought.  It keeps us going, for one.  It makes us more attractive to potential friends and lovers.

How we craft our own meaning, our own narrative, is at the core of our lives.

And let's back up for a second: many of us--us drinkers--would prefer to stay cynical and stay outside.  But we're not being courageous by concocting world theories based on criticism.  We're being very, very scared, and meek, and embracing smallness.  In short, we don't often commit.  To anything.  We don't want to face our smallness.  But we must.  We must continually do it if only to live at some basic level of existential sustenance, some threshold wherein we're cease to be human.

What's the first step out?  Try something that you're not good at.  Try it again.  And again.  Frustrated? Living with anger?  Washing the dishes?  Think about how that anger permeates the crinkles in your face and provides apt handles for all those self-critical thoughts.  How comfortable we all are to denigrate ourselves.  How comfortable we all are to be ego-maniacs in a full tidal wave of bipolarity.

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