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.