I’m glad the eye bag surgery was a success. Do you think that, the wig and some new clothes will majorly enhance your confidence? I ask because I’ve been weight training for the last few months and I’m starting to see some broadening of the shoulders and thickening of the arms (I’m naturally skinny and I’ll never be a hunk). It now gives me a boost to look in the mirror each morning. Is it shallow to be so concerned about one’s appearance? I don’t know. I’ll take pretty much any boost I can get at my age. One day we need to have a long conversation about the pitfalls of identity – it fascinates me.
I’m learned to be a bit more forgiving and even generous to ego identity. It’s not that stupid. I’d expect we’d be evolved to have some sort of relatively accurate self representation of how others see us.
Your muscles got bigger, and you got more confident. That’s not all inside your head. You got more confident because you have an accurate mental map of how OTHER people see you – you have an accurate theory of mind for how others view you.
That’s high level stuff – not low level stuff. Ego is smart. And good. The smarter the ego the better.
We are enmeshed. We feel better when we are loved. Ego stroking is a great pleasure. And so we learn how to be socially skilled enough to get ego strokes. That’s high level stuff.
Ego business is not monkey business. It’s human business. There is plenty of room for ego learning and development – but not without just first accepting that it’s cool to feel cool.
And of course no one can sustain feeling cool without figuring out the incredibly complex social and power system – you can’t be cool and be a narcissist at the same time. It’s not sustainable.
