The ego is a tool.
~ Michael Cavallaro in “The 55 Concepts”
When I write about beauty and things of the soul many of you respond as to how it touches you. Recently I began to wonder how much we leave ourselves open to the things of the soul. So often in life and with my clients I find that the soul is not running our lives; ego is. As I learn more about the ego in my mentoring classes I learn to see the ego as the part of us involved in getting ahead, making an impression, competing, judging, measuring. It is sometimes like a 2 year old, always wanting more and never satisfied. There is never enough; I am never enough; there will never be enough; and on and on. It is a very useful and very important part of us as it is our operating system here. The problem comes in when instead of having it be a functioning part of us we put it in the driver’s seat and allow it to be in charge. Though it has its place – being in charge is not the best role for our ego to play.
Ego is kind of like a New York City cab driver. You get to the city, you hop in the cab, and you tell the driver where you want to go. You trust the driver to know how to get there.
What most of us do however is make our ego not the driver but the decision maker as well. It’s kind of like getting into the same New York City cab and telling the driver to take you wherever he wants. You may be thinking about 1st class restaurants, wonderful shows and beautiful museums but without this information given to the cab driver you may end up at Louigi’s for pizza, and riding around the Bronx or at a boxing match for entertainment (of course it could be the other way around! 🙂
We wonder how we miss the beauty in life, the time for musing, the richness of truly getting to know loved ones. When we look around we often find its because we were too busy crossing out one more thing on our ‘to do’ list, trying to keep up with the Joneses, struggling to be a success, chasing “more”. We had let our ego direct our lives instead of simply be our driver.
What is your soul longing for? What are the things that would be important if you knew you only had a few precious hours, weeks or months upon this earth? What are the things that make your heart sing? They don’t have to be big things; maybe to watch a sunset, play with the dog, have lunch with a friend. Why not let your ego know now; put them in your planner; decide what it is you want to do; and once you decide who is in charge you can “leave the driving to…” – your ego – giving it the opportunity to once again do just what it was designed to do.