Ego

Today I met a man who was raised in a  refugee camp in Kuwait.  He now lives in America, with his wife and four kids.  For some reason he engaged me in conversation, began telling me about his experiences as his young son played with the Library's legos.


"It's hard to be simple in life," he said, hunched over the puzzle table.  "It's hard to not have an ego.  You know what I mean about ego?"


I said, I thought so, the ego was about wanting more, being more.


"No," he said, "let me clarify.  I can handle extremes.  I drive a truck, no air conditioning, you know how this weather has been 100 degrees?"  He slices his hand sideways through the air.  "No problem.  30, 40 degrees below?  I can sleep on the ground, no problem."


He lifts his baseball cap, runs a hand through his thick, dark hair.


"By ego I mean, you don't think of yourself.  You can stand there, let someone yell at you, insult you, spit in your face.  You want to react.  You want to have pride, but you don't.  You can't.  It's for your survival."


He pauses as he looks over at his boy.  Then he looks back at me.


"You, I can tell, you get it," he says.  "You know what I'm saying.  Other people in this country, I start talking about ego and they look at me like I'm crazy, say, 'Ego? What do you mean, ego?  Let's go to McDonald's."


Another pause.  Sadness comes over him, and suddenly, I feel sad myself.


When he takes his son home, I look up Ego and find this definition:  "Ego: (spirituality):  the self; self-concept; conceptual identity; or identification with individual existence."


Imagine living in a place or in a situation where all traces of your personality, your identity, your soul, are compartmentalized, shut up and put away out of necessity.  It's either have a soul or die.  Imagine having to make that choice.


Living simply and humbly shouldn't be hard.  It should be the number one thing.  It should be all that matters.  My own ego feels bruised tonight, and very, very grateful.