My Ego - Friend and Foe

My ego is a complicated beast. It is in me to help me, but unwittingly, at times, it hurts me.

My ego is the light wolf and the dark Wolf. As you can read more about in my post titled "I Am The Wolf." But I wanted to go into more details about that in this post. My ego gives me the confidence to do hard things and to get outside my comfort zone. It makes me believe that I can overcome obstacles and yet at the same time it is the obstacle.

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"The impediment to action advances action.

What stands in the way becomes the way."

— Marcus Aurelius

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There are times that my ego wants to keep me from doing things that might hurt me. For example, there are times when my ego tells me that I'm not a good enough teacher because it wants me to stay home from work because work is a stressful place to be. The light Wolf knows that I am a good enough teacher, but the dark Wolf feels like work is so stressful that it tells me not to go. If I feed the dark wolf and I don't go to work because I'm not a good teacher, those thoughts get louder in my head and the dark wolf is the impediment to action. It keeps me home and does not allow me to be the man I want to be because it is trying to protect me from the stress of my work place. If I feed the light Wolf, and I do go to school because I am a good teacher then what stands in the way becomes the way. I have to go through the dark wolf to feed the light Wolf and in doing so I prove myself to myself. But this inner battle, that rages all day every day, is exhausting.

I want to be the dad that provides for his children. I don't want to spoil them but I do want them to be happy. When I go to Walmart, let's say, with my kids, they ask me for things that they want. I know that saying 'no' to them will make them upset, but saying 'yes' to them is spoiling them. The dark wolf tells me that saying 'no' to my kids upsets them and that makes me a bad dad and I should just buy them what they want. But this is the impediment to the action of raising good, selfless and resilient children. If I feed the light Wolf by trusting that not buying my children everything they ask for, which is the action I am going for, I know I have to deal with unhappy children. Dealing with unhappy children is what stands in the way of raising good children, thus the impediment to action (short-term pleasure for my children) advances the action (raising good children) and thus what stands in the way becomes the way.

But it's exhausting. Not in a 'complaining about being tired' kind of exhausting, but a profound exhaustion that makes me 'fall asleep at the wheel' kind of exhausting. All day long there is this battle between the light wolf and the dark wolf raging inside me, and the easy thing to do would be to feed the dark wolf. It would be so much easier to just let my children get what they want. They would think I was a good dad, and the dark wolf would tell me I was a good dad. There are no arguments when I feed the dark wolf. My ego wins in the short term every time I feed the dark wolf but it wins in the long run if I feed the light wolf.

It isn't as simple as the difference between hedonism and nihilism, it is much more nuanced than that. Sometimes my ego tells myself that being a teacher, and trying to change the lives of the teenagers with whom I work doesn't matter at all. So my dark wolf tells me to just fall back on the traditional model of education and becomes the impediment to the action of trying to be a teacher that delivers a 'product' that makes a difference in the lives of every student that walks into my classroom. But the light Wolf knows that the way is actually to ignore the dark wolf and to walk a path of innovation and creativity. The dark wolf wants to kill my creativity and protect me from people who might ridicule me or push back against some of the innovative pedagogical tools I want to use in my classroom. The light Wolf knows it has to push through the thoughts that I might fail in providing a meaningful and innovative experience for my students and give it a try anyway. "What stands in the way (the dark wolf) becomes the way (the light wolf)"

As I mentioned earlier the struggle is exhausting, trying to feed the light wolf and protecting myself from the dark wolf. The more the dark wolf gets fed, the stronger he becomes, the more I lose myself. The more I lose myself the more I sink into the depths of depression.

The dark wolf keeps me from my values. It does not want me to live a virtuous life. The dark wolf wants to keep me in a shell, or a cage, or a dark room, etc. The dark wolf wants me to survive, but the light wolf wants me to thrive. Feeding the light wolf brings me closer to who I am and who I want to be. It connects me to my virtues. Living a life as the man that I am, is the solution to depression. And as simple as all that sounds, I'll write more about it in an effort to clarify that thought later, because it's far from simple.