What do people mean when they talk about getting rid of ego? How do people define ego? I think of ego simply as ‘I’ – ego is my ‘self’, how I differentiate and identify me from others. I’m not sure why this is a bad thing, or why I should want to get rid of myself!
A lifelong task is to balance and moderate ego – ‘me, myself, I’ – so that ego is most conducive for a fully engaged human life. It is certainly a task for parents to assist children with this, and in most cultures there are practices in place to help people balance and moderate their ego.
Some cultural and societal practices are not conducive to a well-balanced ego, and we can change or remove those practices because cultures and societies are also changing and evolving. We can moderate or replace those practices with practices that are conducive to healthy egos.
An unhealthy ego
An unhealthy ego is not balanced or properly moderated. It is inflated or deflated.
An inflated ego is egotistical, egocentric, self-centered, selfish, individualistic, even narcissistic. A deflated ego is low self-esteem, low self-worth, undervalued, fused with ‘other’ to the point of having no independence or autonomy, depressed and anxious.
Both inflated ego and deflated ego are isolated from the interdependent connections with other’s egos that are essential for human wellbeing and flourishing. They are both fearful; a puffed up ego and a withdrawn ego are both protecting an ego that feels fragile and unsafe. A healthy ego is robust and resilient, and able to be appropriately vulnerable in order to make meaningful connections with other egos.
We are all other and we are all ordinary
I is an ego living here, now, on this planet, with every other ego living here, now, on this planet at this time. I experience life in this body, with these feelings and thoughts and opinions and sensations. To get rid of that I would have to be dead. I’m quite keen on living and experiencing life!
Maybe what is required, to be an ego that is neither overly inflated nor deflated, is to hold lightly to experience, to hold lightly to thoughts and opinions and feelings and material objects, so I don’t put undue importance or sense of permanence on my experiences. I may embrace my life as ego, as an embodied human being – an ‘I’ – without grasping too tightly or clingingly, but to be flexible, evolving, non-judgmental, and open to experience.
In this way, ego will be neither inflated nor deflated in the presence of other, but exist in recognition and acknowledgment and acceptance that, to every other ‘other’, ego is also ‘other’ – so I am neither special nor insignificant, but rather, like every other other, I am simply ordinary.
An ordinary person is an average person, and an average person is a common person (acknowledging that there have been, and will always be, some truly extraordinary people). But most of us are simply average egos, doing our best to keep our lives on some manageable equilibrium. Instead of getting rid of that, we could support and celebrate and embrace all egos.