a brief non-definitive essay on the ego
Talking about egos is always a difficult conversation, especially in the 21st century, since the internet has brought forth a profusion of people who clearly have big egos and yet are compelled to tell everyone else what big egos they have. I can't tell you how many times I've started reading someone's story about how their own ego has been destroyed, and how the rest of us will get there someday if we're lucky, only to realize that this person likely has an even bigger ego than the average person, and it's far from destroyed. Of course, that person almost invariably adds the caveat: "If you're offended by this, remember, that's just your own ego talking!" as an attempt to prevent people from arguing with them. It's a nice trick. I see LOTS of people falling for it. You don't have to. You owe those people absolutely nothing. But that's a whole other tangent that I won't get into right now because I want to keep this relatively short.
To the point: My belief is that everyone has an ego, and that the ego is simply part of our personality, and not necessarily some mystical thing that connects us to the divine. It can be that, if you happen to be having a mystical or divine experience, but it exists "outside" of that realm in the same sense that every earthly thing does. This table I'm sitting at right now can be traced back to trees that grew in a forest once, to life, and therefore to all things spiritual and supernatural, but there's no requirement to always bring that into the conversation when talking about a table. It doesn't always have to be deep.
In modern usage, ego is almost always brought up as an insult, except when it's being talked about in a spirituality or psychotherapy sense, so it's no surprise that some people, myself included, recoil instinctively at the mere mention of it. But if everyone has one, then there must be a sense in which it is not insulting, or even descriptive, like saying that you "have a body." Everyone has a body, and if you don't have one, you don't exist. The confusion lies in the belief that egos are bad, and the fact that we often shorten the insult of saying someone has a big ego to something like "Well, someone has an ego!" To understand the ego, we have to let go of the idea that having one is bad or that only some people have one. What is bad is having a very big or overactive ego.
The ego, as I view it, is our natural resistance to emotional harm or stress. Almost no one ever wants to go through anything difficult unless that thing is of their choosing. People who run marathons or raise kids or get their PhDs may face extreme difficulties, but these difficulties were chosen, even if they couldn't be foreseen precisely. When difficulty is expected, it can be fun and rewarding, up to a certain point of course. But no one desires to have their car break down or to miss their bus, nor does anyone believe they deserve that. The ego is protection. In the same way that our hands will suddenly fly up to protect our face when we see an object flying towards us out of the corner of our eye, our ego reacts when we feel emotional harm coming on and tries to push that harm back outwards.
To put it another way, our ego is the thing that stops us from being an actual perfect human. We all have desires, attachments, habits, preferences, insecurities. We expect (rightfully) that life should be at least decent and bearable, that we should get to make our own choices and feel like we own ourselves. The second anything infringes on that expectation, our ego kicks in. If someone makes us do something we don't want to, we feel burdened. If someone, through a judgment we assume they'll make, stops us from doing something we would like to do, we feel burdened. A truly ego-less person would be in a state of constant bliss, moving through life effortlessly, always willing to help when asked and never feeling like they're missing out on anything. If you've ever been in such a good mood that you felt like everyone who's ever wronged you was forgiven, and you could take whatever came your way with a smile on your face, even things that normally would bother you, then you know what it feels like. That's your ego temporarily going into hiding: complete acceptance of everything.
While the ego in a general sense can be defined, I don't think it can be separated from the rest of our personality. The human mind is like a glass of water, and it's practically impossible to separate certain drops of that water while leaving the rest, even though when you look at the glass you are able to see all the drops that make up the water at once. Ultimately, the only person who can know for sure whether some action you took was due to your ego is you, but the bigger our egos are, the less likely we are to ever be able to admit to ourselves when it was. In regards to others, we simply have to make a judgment call on how we feel about a person and whether we can accept them in our lives. For people with normal egos, that decision can often be difficult. We don't want to undershoot, which would harm ourselves by allowing hurtful people to stay around us, but we don't want to overshoot either, which would harm the other person. If you ever find yourself going back and forth between feeling angry at someone, and feeling guilty for what part you may have played, that means you're normal. It means you have self awareness and you care about things being fair.
What about the obvious egomaniacs? If the ego is protection, wouldn't that mean that the people with the biggest egos are the ones who are the most frightened of being human? Yes! That is exactly what it means. Their whole lives, in a sense, are a distraction from it, an attempt to outrun the self until the day they die, at which point they "win" by never having been a sucker like the rest of us. No one is more afraid to examine themselves than an egomaniac. They think entirely outwardly. For them, the inside of their minds is a locked box that cannot be tampered with. Anything they experience, they see as coming from outside of them. Since good experiences make them feel good (as they do for everyone), they see those experiences as the way things should be, regardless of how they make anyone else feel. And since bad experiences make them feel bad, they see those experiences as always being the fault of someone else, since they only wish to feel good and can't understand that they may have played some part in their own misfortune. In a sense, they see themselves as the universe, the main character of existence, rather than one small part in it. Outwardly, they may seem bold and confident, but this is simply the result of never having to think about themselves as being a part of the human community, or even subject to the human condition. If you believe the world exists to serve you, then you don't have to worry about your own actions.
So, what should we do about them? How should they be treated? Since they're the most afraid, should we coddle them and treat them like we do a child? Hardly. They'll use you like a toothbrush and throw you out when they don't need you anymore. Part of the reason there are so many egomaniacs is that there are so many parents who never tell their kids no, but instead teach them that they can do whatever they want and deserve whatever they want, regardless of how they act. They simply need to be dealt with firmly. Unfortunately, they usually lie and manipulate, so it can be hard for us to spot them before we invite them- or they insert themselves- into our lives, and sometimes we have no choice but to live with them. And for a person with a normal-sized ego, we again run into the problem of not wanting to overshoot and be too harsh. After all, do we really know what they've been through, and why they're like that? What if we're too hard on them and make things worse? But that is the dance of life. Not all is fair in love and war, but love and fighting (in the sense of disagreeing with people) will always exist, and it's up to us to balance how we feel with how we envision the world should be.
I realize that my definition of the ego may differ greatly from some of the more traditional definitions. I haven't read a book about psychology in years, and I did absolutely no research on the subject, other than my own observations. Fortunately for me though, no one can even prove that the ego exists. It's more of a concept, a way to understand or model something, than an actual tangible thing. Basically, we're all just using our own definitions of it, in the same way we do with concepts like beauty or loyalty, but I think my explanation is one that the average person could get behind. I could be wrong, but if I am, it doesn't necessarily mean it was my ego talking. In this case it's just an uneducated guess.
For anyone who's actively trying to be less ego-based, or just to understand in what situations someone's motivations might be based on their ego being offended or put in harm's way, I think the important thing to remember is that ego-based reactions aren't always grandiose and obvious, like a viral video of someone yelling at a barista. The average ego response is practically invisible, and often done alone, without any direct interaction. That nagging feeling you have throughout all adulthood that you aren't doing enough, that you aren't handling it as well as everyone else? That's also our egos feeling threatened, this time by society at large. And so we make these never-ending micro-adjustments to compensate. The ego is a natural, unavoidable aspect of being human, of being vulnerable to damage while living a finite life with finite abilities in a bafflingly large and complex world, in which the only answers we're given about what to do come from other people who we're not always sure we can trust. It's our protection from the cold hard truth of reality.
written 5/26/26