Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about ego, especially the role of individual ego in community.
Anyone who has done community building work has stories about egos, and none of them are very good stories with happy endings. Our egos can rear up at the worst of times and derail entire projects. They can get bruised and battered. They can respond emotionally and cause pain to others. They can sometimes get into the biggest brawls. They can even completely shatter well-intentioned intiatives, friendships, and entire communities.
I wonder if egos are a byproduct of our competitive culture or if they are part of human nature. A lot of great thinkers thought that egos were a part of humanity, but in hindsight we can acknowledge that those thinkers were also a part of colonial culture, not to mention a culture of human exceptionalism. Are egos just a manifestation of a desire to thrive? Some Darwinian response in a modern capitalist culture. Maybe. Maybe not.
Like many, I’ve struggled with my ego over the years. As an accutely shy child, I hid my ego deep deep down inside when I was young. As I got older and began to recogniz that I was skilled at certain activities, my ego blossomed and I carried around learned to find pride in myself. For the record, I don’t think this is a bad thing.
As I entered the workforce, some days I could feel my ego grow too big: I worked for years in a male dominated industry and often did feel like my voice was quieted by men (and their egos). Looking back, I am embarrased to say that I responded in a bad way, letting my ego try and take over. I was supposed to be condifent and self assured, two things that didn’t come naturally to me so that confidence often came off as aggressiveness and often led to frustration.
When I left the workforce a few years ago, it was really nice to give my ego a break from the professional workplace. It was so wobbly when I left because I wasn’t sure of the direction my life was taking. It didn’t have the confidence to be conflated like it used to be. It had been bruised enough times that it didn’t want to enter into the picture. I had more than one job where I left feeling confused about how to behave without ego leading the way.
It’s not surprising, then, to recognize that ego in the workplace had made me very wary of taking on this current volunteer role. It’s a big and critical role with the coop that I knew would see a lot of back patting and expressions of gratitude: two things that would normally feed a bruised ego. I asked myself the question many times - am I doing this for myself - my ego - or because it’s important work? On the surface, it would seem that either answer, or a combination of both, is likely true but I knew that if I let my ego enter into the mix, things could get ugly. There were already a lot of folks who had been working with the coop for many years - a lot of personalities and a lot of egos. The last thing that I wanted to do was add my own ego into the mix. That’s where things can get explosive.
So I did my best to check my ego at the door and focus on the betterment of the coop. Every step and every decision, I stopped to make sure that it wasn’t ego leading. I doubt that my ego is entirely gone from the work, but I can say that it hasn’t gotten in the way, which I count as a win.
I can see other egos flare up from time to time in the people that I’m working with and I’m glad I can recognize what is an ego response over a systemic problem so that I can respond accordingly. One strange side effect is that when people do give me praise or thanks, it makes me feel very childish and immature, as if I’m a kid getting that pat on the head for a job well done. The praise actually makes me feel genuinely uncomfortable. That might be because my ego isn’t interested in receiving the praise, or because I’m letting a bit of the shyness creep back in. Again, it’s probably both.
I also lost my phone this week and I noticed another way that ego jumps into the mix: posting online. Being a few days away from making any posts, I can again see the combination of ego with genuine desire to do good mixed together as the intention behind sharing my life on Instagram. Now I have to decide whether I want to source out another phone or just finally saying goodbye to daily time spent in Instagram. I haven’t decided which way to go yet. I was about to suggest that the benefits of having a cell phone outweigh the benefits of not having a cell phone… but I’m not actually sure if that’s true.
As with everything else, I’m sure there’s an element of balance that I’m missing, where I don’t have to condemn my ego for acting in certain ways or growing or getting bruised. In this way, egos likely are just part of being human. But I can also say that doing the work around recognizing what behaviours are ego-motivated has really helped me avoid conflict in community and prioritize collective well-being. Ten out of ten. Highly recommended.
my first time using the listen feature (that isn’t the author reading) and it was really good. thanks for sharing this reminder of egos and how we can operate with them aside when we recognize it.