Meet Ego, your best frenemy
Bartender wisdom... or is it?
My dear beloved customers,
I’m always amazed about how different languages express a same idea or concept with very different words or sentences leading to a slightly different meaning.
For instance, in English, one of my favorite expression is “Leap of Faith” because those two nouns together say it all, whereas there is not quite the same expression in French for we, French people, are actually leaping in the unknown, missing the whole faith concept in the process, though quite an essential one when we jump off a cliff even metaphorically!
In the very same way, a few weeks ago, I was explaining to one of my regulars what selfishness actually is and I realized how the word in English is so confusing comparing to the French one - though, as very few people know exactly what the ego is, the confusion remains the same - for in French, we use the word “egoism” which is a less used synonym for anglophones.
Indeed, as my regular thought and as the word “selfishness” doesn’t convey at all, egoism does not mean being centered on ourselves or inner selves but being centered on our ego, our self-defense default device.
In that sense, being selfish is definitely not taking care of our “selves” before taking care of others, it is making our wounds more important than anything and anyone else as the word “ego-ism” states it perfectly.
Meet Ego, your best frenemy
First of all, as stated above, ego is a coping device, the one that helps us face danger and hurts when we are a child, hence helpless when the going gets tough.
When we reach adulthood, we are supposed to take over it and let our true selves lead the dance for we have everything we need inside of us to handle any situation we are presented with, except for real life threatening dangers, of course, when ego can still be very much needed to survive.
But instead of that, we become those schizophrenic dysfunctional beings with two personalities competing to exist: our ego and our true self.
For in reality, as we live in societies that keep us in a fearful state as much as possible, encouraging us to keep on feeling helpless victims of an uncontrolable hellish fate, even religions only promising us happiness and bliss after we die, we let the ego take the wheel in our driver’s seat rather than regaining the control of the car when of age, convinced that there’s no way we will be able to drive that car on our own without crashing it.
Believe me on that, not only do we know how to drive that car, for we were born with a permanent license for that car, and the odds of us crashing it are almost nil whereas our ego’s crashing chances are one hundred purcent with lots of collateral damages.
As the ego is a tool inherited from our childhood, it behaves like a child, trying to compensate every aspect of our very frail and unreliable self - it is the very reason it has taken control of things in the first place, remember. As it is calibrate to do exactly that, ego will try to find every possible ways to help us dodge physical pain and emotional aches, taking us as far away possible from love, happiness and joy because, if we encounter them in our life, we’re in great danger of losing them and thus getting hurt in the process. “No pain, no gain” is definitely not part of our ego’s vocabulary.
Ego lives in a very chaotic place called comfort zone. As messy and wounded that place is, it is a well-known and safe place, a place in which we, or rather it, is in control. No new harm can happen to us there, only the familiar ones, the ones we are accustomed to and don’t even feel the pain anymore for they have become part of us.
Any new situations may get us hurt so our ego will keep us safe sending us imaginary projection and false information to prevent us from stepping into any of them. “If we don’t move, life won’t see us” is definitely our ego’s favorite quote.
In this “Finding Nemo” excerpt, Dory is our true oblivious and joyous self and Marlin is our ego. As Dory states it so sweetly: how much fun would life be if nothing ever happened to us?
As our ego is our wounded self, it needs a lot of compensations for us to function fully, to compensate the unconditional love and joy we are prevented to experience by the fear of loosing them. Isn’t it weird to fear losing something we don’t even have?
This perspective upon life leads us to behaviours very close to the ones of a capricious child - after all, our ego is a representation of our inner wounded child - who needs constant attention and has the insatiable desire to shine in everyone’s eyes, whatever the cost, for when ego is in control, we are not able to recognize love when we’re presented with it, we just let it pass through without acknowledging it.
Because the pain of the wounds the ego is guarding is just so intense in itself that a simple tiny push at them makes it unbearable, that same child suffers no refusal, no rejection, no frustration without them triggering epic episodes of anger and retaliation, the self-defense mechanism the ego was built for.
The most paradoxical thing about our ego device is that as it is impossible to satisfy - you can relieve the pain of a wound momentarily, but you can’t “satisfy” it in any other way than healing it - it also is our greatest source of frustration, nourishing the wound it is defending, preventing it to heal in the process.
We are never good enough, will never be loved enough and therefore are doomed to be frustrated, unhappy and so angry, perpetual victims of such an unfair world. For if we’re not in the driver’s seat of our life, we are the first collateral damage of our ego’s conduct, the original and primal victim. But if we choose to take the wheel, to lead the way in our life, we are not victims anymore, we become the heroes of our story.
Stay tuned for next week I will give you a few tricks to help you take back the control of that car of yours and get rid of that hysterical, abusive and very bossy voice in your head!
For those who would like further guidance to work on their ego, remember that I am not only a Bartender but also a Life Coach who can help you with tools to regain the control of your life.
So don’t hesitate to DM me on Substack or on my website G-Spotlight to schedule a session and assess your needs.
Bartenderly yours,
Geay
PS: If you like her stories but are not ready to subscribe yet, you can always tip the Bartender.
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Results, outcome & Samantha Fox
All true! Unfortunately, it wasn’t until my 50s that I realized how damaging my ego had been to my relationships. Man, what freedom once I learned that it doesn’t have the power to name who I am!
Beautifully said, beautifully written and true!🙏🏼