Recently I have been more in tune with, and listening to the impact of Ego on our imagination. Our early childhood was Ego-less. We felt no shame running naked through our backyards, waving our arms, and singing songs. As children we also experience no limitations in our imagination. We were in tune with nature and the universe. We stared up at the clouds and crafted beautiful worlds and outrageous characters from tufts of vapor floating across the sky.
What changed?
We adopted shame as a way to police our souls into conforming to what is “socially acceptable.”
Rolf Dobelli writes in The Art of Thinking Clearly that “herd instinct” (or more commonly known as “social proof”) can carry us quickly and comfortably down the river of conformity. It accounts for why you may encounter a group of people staring at the sky—not looking for those childlike cloud characters—but simply because everyone else is doing it.
It exists in fashion, management techniques, hobbies, religion, and diets. It can paralyze whole cultures…
– Rolf Dobelli, “The Art of Thinking Clearly”
Following others was a critical evolutionary construct designed to keep us safe. If your fellow cavemen, seemingly out of nowhere bolt and scatter you don’t stick around to ask questions, you high-tail it out of there. Applying this self-preservation technique to life in the jungle is common sense. However, we aren’t living life with a jaguar lurking in the trees above us anymore. The same instinct that once helped us evade predators now compels us to avoid social embarrassment at all costs.
Take a moment and consider this question: As an adult, what would it take for you to tap into the shameless freedom we had as a child and run naked through the streets, waving your arms, singing songs of joy for even a few minutes? The answer is directly tied to the size and strength of our Ego.
In order to overcome the ensuing mortification we’d have to make an offering to our Ego. Today, this would probably be in the form of cash. How much money would I have to pay you to do x; a common anecdote that prompts an exploration of the freeness of our spirit. Consider what would appease our Ego to make it socially acceptable to “act a fool“.
Western culture exposes us daily to the “affluenza” virus (the most dangerous type of virus—one that can steal your soul). The virus idolizes five things: Possessions, Achievements, Looks (physical appearance), Money, Status.
– Jim Murphy, “Inner Excellence”
The five components of the affluenza virus are the same categories of offerings we’d make to our ego to quiet it enough to enjoy the freedom of running naked through the streets. What does this say about ourselves? What power do we give our Ego when we allow it to shame us into conformity? What do we sacrifice?
I’m not sure I’d ever be able to find comfort in, nor am I advocating for a trail of clothes littering the streets behind a wave of nudity. I do, however, find value in the examination on the impact Ego has on our ability to tap into our creativity and imagination. Especially if our Ego is keeping us from innovating, curing, or creating by quieting our imagination and distracting us with meaningless endeavors —I’m looking at you social media.
I may never fully overpower my conditioning to feel shame in being weird, vulnerable, and different, but maybe I can stifle it long enough to live in the peripherals of true creativity.
It’s been over a decade since I wrote “On Creative Leadership.” On reflection, my attempts to tap into my imagination and harness creativity may have just been tactics in quieting my Ego. Maybe drawing inspiration from an early morning connection to my subconscious, or sparks of innovation emerging from the comfort of a hot shower were actually moments when my Ego was still asleep?
I do know that the pursuit of true creativity is worthy of what little time I have left on this planet, and committing myself to it will have symptomatic benefits in my work, my writing, and the connections I have with my loved ones.
I’ll leave you with a (truncated) quote from David Foster Wallace that, for a fleeting moment was able to grip the throat of my Ego and challenge its hold on me. I now aim to recreate that feeling regularly.
…in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships… …pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.
– David Foster Wallace, Author
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