What the Hell is This?

About six or seven years ago I had a truly memorable “aha” moment.

I had been reading a book by the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron — When Things Fall Apart, or was it The Wisdom of No Escape? — and some subatomic particle of wisdom must have penetrated my hard head. I remember walking down the street on a sunny day, lost in my usual obsessive and negative thoughts — why me, why me? — when suddenly, for no apparent reason, I looked up at the blue sky and thought, I am not that important.

All at once my anxiety dispersed, as if by magic. For several hours thereafter I remained in a state of calm and (dare I say it?) peace.

This was wholly counter-intuitive. I grew up in America, dammit, land of Davy Crockett and Horatio Alger and libertarianism. Isn’t the individual the measure of all things? Isn’t the whole point of life to distinguish ourselves from the herd, and to get our piece of the apple pie? Or to make it onto the cover of People magazine?

And then there was my upbringing in evangelical Christianity, which teaches us twice-born kids from birth that we’re so very special, our separate, unique little godfearing selves are so utterly important to our Heavenly Father, that He sent His Only Son just to die on our behalf so that our disembodied personalities wouldn’t fry eternally in the lake of fire with the godless heathens (who aren’t very special at all, apparently. Unless you’re a missionary or something).

Add to that some accelerated early learning — I was labeled as a “gifted” child, and did schoolwork two grades ahead for the first several of my elementary years — and, presto! you have a recipe for borderline megalomania. If Americans are superior to the rest of the world’s citizens, and Christians are superior to the legions of nonbelievers populating this evil planet, and “gifted” children are superior to their idiot classmates who do age-appropriate work, then I was la creme de la creme. I was Supergirl. I was way more important than you, you poor slob.

Thus I started off my life journey completely identified with things that made me “special.” Things that made me need to guard my turf, to oppose, to compete. Things that could be taken away from me at a moment’s notice.

And that’s exactly what happened. Other kids surpassed me in school. My ossified faith crumbled to ashes. I failed to make money or headlines, to pull myself up by my red-white-and-blue bootstraps. My self-esteem took a nosedive. The flip side of grandiosity, after all, is inferiority.

Eastern faith traditions like Buddhism (as well as modern mystics like Eckhart Tolle) recognize all of this as the activity of the ego, the constructed self that strives to maintain the illusion of separateness. It feeds on feelings of personal importance, and thrives on grievances and the need to be right. Anything that strengthens that sense of individual special-ness or better-ness is good, to the ego. Unfortunately, its constant internal monologues can create a monstrous tunnel vision, eliminating all perspective and sense of proportion. Ego concerns can dominate a person’s entire consciousness, to the exclusion of anything and everything else that might be going on.

Case in point: there I was, on a beautiful summer day, obsessing and ruminating miserably about my past and all its repetitive, seemingly insurmountable failures. For me, the sky may as well have been pitch black and raining down hailstones. Consumed by despair, I think I was actually contemplating suicide.

And then, the miraculous thought: I am not that important.

In that moment, my massive, dark, bloated, all-consuming ego deflated like a stuck balloon.

The pressure was off. Pressure to live up to expectations, whether they were my family’s or my peers’ or my own; pressure to do something, for god’s sake, and get it right; pressure to solve the never-ending and intractable problem of AlienBaby. Was the earth going to stop turning on its axis if I didn’t get my act together? Who the hell did I think I was?!

All those frenzied thoughts, all their well-worn circuits of self-blame and self-pity, just ceased. I had obliterated their underlying operating assumption. If my strictly individual concerns and desires and achievements really weren’t the be-all end-all in the grand scheme of things, then why expend so much energy? Why create so much distress?

It was radical, to me, coming from where I came from. It was a relief.

…

Many times since, personal importance, the labored machinations of my overactive ego, have more often that not been the prime culprit when I’ve fallen into the heavy quicksand of depression and the sticky sinkholes of despair.

If you’re like me, you may find that when you don’t get the job, the promotion, the coveted affection and attention of a certain person, your sense of specialness is mortally affronted. Why haven’t I “won?” And who, then, is the superior candidate? What often doesn’t help matters is that your friends, relatives, and colleagues, who care about you and have your best interests at heart, may collaborate with your ego and encourage you to think that you deserve X more than someone else because you are better. (Your fear, of course, is that you are worse!) How many times have we sat over coffee with friends, bemoaning the phony bastard who sucked up to the boss or the shallow bitch who got the guy? There would be no plot to most romantic comedies were it not for this need for somebody (e.g. the sweet underdog suitor) to be “better.” Professional sports franchises might likewise languish and go out of business without the fierce identification of fans with a team they believe is superior to all others. (I’m not saying people wouldn’t still enjoy the game, but the more fanatical manifestations of such identification would have no impetus.)

Let’s be frank: a rather nerve-wracking ego investment in being Number One is ingrained deeply into our collective American psyche (USA! USA!), and no one ever wants to be the “loser.”

But the game theme is perhaps a good one to stick with. Some of the more (to my mind) “enlightened” individuals on our planet, like Tolle, author Don Miguel Ruiz, and the wonderful Roz and Ben Zander, have suggested in one way or another that everything in life can and should be treated as a game, albeit not a high-stakes one. (I think my new friend Pablo would say the same.) Their focus is upon gentle experimentation and lighthearted play, upon the appreciation of the richness, texture, and variety of all that exists on the “game board” of life, rather than an attachment to getting some nifty prize in the end. Engagement, to these seemingly happier souls, is much more vital than outcome.

Within this alternate framework, we might start to loosen the clenched fists of ego, of our own personal importance and our need to win, thereby becoming more capable of holding gently and then releasing whatever cards the present moment deals us. We could perhaps enjoy the game of life, without taking it all so personally.

Playing this way would require of us greater patience, kindness, and awareness. Unlike our usual games, this one presupposes cooperation rather than competition.

But anyone and everyone could play, if they were willing to take off their platform shoes.