During a conversation with a friend, we reached a point where we began discussing this subject. Her husband, who joined us halfway through, felt a little targeted when he heard her say that size was the least important thing. The look on his face was priceless (misunderstandings like this often happen when we join a conversation halfway through). And yes, size does matter — the size of the ego, in case anyone here joined halfway through the conversation.
The bigger the ego, let us put it that way, the more we want in life, the more we want to show what we have and how much we have. We want to show that we have the best car, the best house, the best partner, the best job… We want to show that we are the most intelligent, the fastest, the cleverest, the best-looking; we want people to know because, of course, we seek recognition from others to feed that insatiable creature called the ego.
But what lies behind all that need for recognition? Have you ever stopped to think about it? Emptiness.
We seek recognition to fill voids. We seek approval from others because there are things we don’t believe we deserve. We seek recognition to prove ourselves to someone from the past who belittled us, someone we allowed to create that hole inside us. We brought that person with us from the past and still haven’t realised that they are absent from our present; they are now very busy doing the same thing they did to us, but with someone else in the leading role. We no longer exist for that person, but we let them settle inside us, handing them the helm of our lives.
Does the size of the ego matter? It certainly does, because it reflects the harm we allowed others to inflict on us, and instead of healing it, we gave it the power to control our lives. The more we have been hurt (hurt we allowed and did not learn from), the bigger the ego. How do we recognise it? By listening to ourselves whenever we join a conversation and begin with: I have more… I am more… I know more… Me, more, more and more… We can also do this simple exercise silently while listening to others.
What should we do? Learn to love ourselves, remove from our lives those moles who burrow through other people’s lives, constantly digging holes because they are dissatisfied with their own; take away their power. Look in the mirror and love ourselves, believe in ourselves; believe in who we are and what we do. If we know who we are, if we believe we deserve what we have, we won’t need to announce it to the whole world; people will recognise it.
Let us get to work and watch out for those moles who try to approach our lives. Let us recognise them immediately; we won’t let them land. Seeing there is no room for them, these moles will change direction and keep looking for somewhere to land. This time, though, we will no longer be an attractive harbour, and they will remember us as someone whose strength refused to feed their ego.
One morning an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that takes place inside people.
He said: My child, the battle is between two wolves inside all of us.
One is Evil — it is anger, envy, jealousy, sadness, sorrow, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, conceit, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.
The other wolf is good: it embodies joy and peace, love and hope, serenity and humility, kindness and goodwill, friendship and empathy, generosity and truth, compassion and faith.
After considering this for a minute, the grandson asked his grandfather: Which wolf wins?
The old Cherokee replied: The one you choose to feed.
Cherokee legend