Crazy Town (A.K.A My Ego)

My mind took a visit to Crazy Town today. Crazy Town sounds fun you might say, but I assure you it is not. Oh it sounds like a great idea when you decide to go - fun, righteous even - but there is always the inevitable trip home. You leave Crazy town feeling much the same as you might feel leaving Vegas. Slightly hungover, and full of secret regret. You see my lovely husband has been doing dishes and laundry all day in honor of my birthday, which is an amazing and thoughtful gift. The only problem with it is it made me feel guilty enough to snap at him. I felt like his helping me was somehow a comment on my not doing it. What makes this particularly unsettling is that when he doesn't help, I'm pissed about that too (I have no idea how he is still married to me, bless his soul).

It is like my ego has a death grip on my happiness when it comes to these things. Somewhere in my mind I have learned that it is not ok to be happy or even content, when it comes to house chores. Guilt is the default for getting help. Anger is the default for needing help. My question is this - where is the happy medium between the extremes of guilt and anger? Further, where else in my life is my ego getting in the way of happiness?

Both are difficult questions that I will attempt to answer on my own, but I am much more interested in what all of you think about this conundrum. Because I suspect I am not alone in these feelings. I have a hunch my maniacal ego has had training from my own experience and society at large. Personal development and spirituality books teach me that simple awareness is key to overcoming the ego, but I feel doubtful. It feels much more complicated than that. And even if it is simpler than I think - it will be very hard work to overcome such ingrained thought processes.

To say it will be difficult is not to say that I want to give up before trying - I am just acknowledging the suffering that lies ahead. And frankly, it feels good to vent before going down a path that will be difficult. It seems to be a pattern with me, like the time Joe and I climbed Pikes Peak - a seven mile trail on a fourteeen thousand foot mountain. A feat that intimidated me to my core.

We started out late and before we got a mile in I came up with a dozen reasons why we should turn around and do it another day. Joe would have none of it. That's when I resorted to tears. His reaction to my crying was, "Turn around if you want to, but I'm going to the top." At that point I became angry and did not speak for the next two hours, but I kept walking. I was terrified at what I had gotten myself into and my ego was feeding the fear with thoughts of failure and unworthiness. I feel the same sense of overwhelmed discouragement as I look at my mountainous ego, except that it seems much higher - and I have no Joe to drag me to the top. This is a journey I must travel alone.

It is possible I am making more of this than I should. In fact, perhaps it is simply my ego doing the writing. At times I do feel my ego has a life of its own, warring against my attempts to disarm it. Although, when I think about it, I suppose I am making some progress. There was a time when my ego was only a hint of a shadow in the back of my mind, but now I can see her shape and form and behavior - she is blurry, but I can see her. Perhaps ego destruction is a simple matter of awareness. It is conceivable that my distress is born of impatience. And so maybe the specific advice for me is that awareness over time is the only weapon against an ego gone wild.

Deepak Chopra says, "Your mind is expert at hiding from itself, and your ego insists that building boundaries is one of its most important jobs." This is something I am convinced is true. My ego has all kinds of weird boundaries to "protect" me from being hurt. The problem with most of them is that they also block me from experiencing joy. I am to a point in my life when joy is too precious to squander on silly notions of preventing possible pain. I will choose joy every time when I am conscious of it.

And there is the challenge, the mountain, that lies before me. To ween myself off the strange and addictive behaviors my ego has forged to protect me. To let the messy bits of myself spill out and trust that I will have a towel on hand to clean up when needed. Not easy for a perfectionist, but necessary for contentment. I suppose that leaves one final question when it comes to the ego - do you think she will take bribes of yellow M&M's to behave herself? Yeah, I didn't think so either - but it might be worth a try.

Mind Reading for Lent Anyone?

Lent. While I am certainly not catholic I have come to look forward to the practice of lent. The idea of going without certain indulgences for 40 days has an appeal to me. Mostly, because it is not FOREVER. You can make a commitment to give up anything, say pizza, for a kind of trial period. Perhaps, at the end you will find yourself gorging an entire pizza. But, perhaps you will find there really is no need for pizza in your life at all (and just for the record this would be highly unlikely in my own life - there are times when only a pizza will do). 

So, as I have been sitting back and watching friends give up various worldly goods and habits for lent, I have been thinking about what I might live without for 40 days and 40 nights. Surprisingly, my list was very, very long, and as such I will not bore you with the details. But, I would like to share the habit that won out over all the rest. Mind reading.

Just to be clear for those of you who might be freaking out, I have no magical powers. I only think I do. While I am certainly a perceptive and even intuitive person with a psychology degree - I am wrong more than I am right when getting into the business of other people's minds. A slight gesture or off remark can send me on a tangent of fret for days. When the truth is the person whose mind I have read (usually my husband's) is just having a bad day. By the time I work up the courage to address the issue I have created with the "mind readee", they have no idea what I am talking about. And I have spent all of that time shooting cortisol into my bloodstream for absolutely no reason.

It is a habit, an indulgence, that I can simply no longer afford in my life. I have enough real stress to stop making it up. I recently read this quote somewhere (sorry I can't remember where), "It is none of your business what other people think of you." My immediate and visceral reaction was, "Like hell it isn't!" But as I had time to contemplate the author's meaning behind the statement, I  grew to agree. People either like you or they don't - and it is completely up to them. Being inauthentic for the affections of those who you don't even like is completely ridiculous.

As a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser this has been a huge revelation. Reading minds in the hopes that everyone on earth will like me is something I am hardly aware of, so it will be hard work to stop. I have not taken this decision lightly. In fact, just last night I had a nightmare about it. I was out in the world with very hairy (I'm talking MAN hairy) legs - my legs were completely, 100% EXPOSED to all who passed by and I was mortified. I searched for something to cover them, but my efforts were fruitless. What is interesting to me about the dream is that nobody seemed to notice me or my legs. How's that for symbolism?

I believe lent is the perfect time to let go of such complaisant nonsense. As Kesha sings so eloquently in her latest hit, "We are who we are." And isn't it about time for us to expose the most precious and naked parts of our souls to the world. I have never  met one truly authentic person I did not like, or at least admire. So here's to letting it all hang out this lent - a chance to give your true self a test drive. Who knows, maybe you'll like you and leave the voodoo of mind reading in the dust where it belongs.