Ego: The Detrimental Dog In Me

Ego and love do not go hand-in-hand. Yet, we never let go of it saying that it's vital for being successful in life. How true is that?

A quest for altruism took me through a self-analysis which only made me realise the deep-rooted ego inside. I saw a film named Jism some years back, which talked about the good dog and the bad dog inside a man. I quite liked the thought. Whichever dog we chose to feed more, became stronger than the other.

I had been trying to get rid of this dog in the last few years but amazingly an insight trip made me discover that the more I thought about it, the more that dog became older.  

A journey inside opened my eyes to the naked truth -- Ego cannot go by thought and neither is it beyond human action. Just that we are too blinded with it that we don't seem to identify it growing inside us. You must have heard of the man who went to the temple and got his name engraved on the stone for people to know about his donation. He wanted to please the dog inside him. So, he was a man with ego.

But did you know about the man who went to the temple, gave donations but told everyone that he will not get his name engraved on the temple wall because he doesn't want people to know. He was feeding the same dog.

There was a third man too. Who donated but neither got his name engraved nor told anyone. Not because he was too humble but because he too wanted to please his dog. You will ask how? He thought, sharing or making his donation public would bring him among common people which he was not. His very thought fed the dog.

When someone called me 'egoistic' for the first time in life, it was a setback for me. None of my childhood friends ever said that. Not because I was not, but because I carried it too much that nobody ever dared to. Soon after I was getting overwhelmed with the feeling that the dog inside was weak and dying, I heard this story. I discovered how much food I had been giving to the bad dog inside me making the very thought of killing it redundant. 

Some say ego is important to prove your worth in life but I feel what you do out of love is always greater and more effective than what you may achieve out of ego. People who feed this dog all their life are the biggest sufferers on earth. The best part is that they never realise this because of their EGO.

Me sharing this thought on my blog has fed the same dog to some extent but honestly, I liked writing about it. It is this "good feeling" that is feeding the "bad dog" inside. It has taken years to grow and will not die in a day. Hope you guys liked it and inferred the right notes. Few lines as I conclude...

A book is man’s best friend outside of a dog, and inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.—Jim Brewer