Loveable by Kelly Flanagan

Author:Kelly Flanagan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2017-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

The ego isn’t the psychological equivalent of an internal organ like a heart or a brain or a pancreas. You can’t cut it out like a gallbladder. And because it isn’t made of flesh and blood, it can feel like a bit of an enigma. Ephemeral, like a ghost. But the ego is exactly the opposite of a wispy specter. It’s more like an impenetrable fortress.

The ego is like a castle with three parts: walls, cannons, and thrones.

Walls. When our tender hearts first experience rejection and shame, we build walls around our souls to keep people out and to keep ourselves safe—walls that look like silence and avoidance, or pretending and people-pleasing and public personas, or giving in and fitting in instead of standing up and standing out. Typically, our ego walls develop sometime in elementary school, right around the time we become aware other people can judge us and critique us and belittle us with a single word, or even a simple look.

Cannons. The walls of our ego are a good defense, but the best defense is a good offense, so we eventually add ego cannons to our ego walls. For some of us, ego cannons are violent—lots of fists and fury. But for most of us, ego cannons take on more socially acceptable guises: blame, condemnation, resentment, retaliation, and gossip, to name a few. My wife says men put cannons on their ego walls, but women are more likely to use archers—precision strikes that cut close to the bone. Our ego cannons (or arrows) usually develop sometime in late childhood or early adolescence.

Thrones. When our ego cannons inevitably backfire, leaving us lonelier than ever, we try a different tactic. We build ego thrones on which to sit, and we fancy ourselves royalty. We construct our thrones out of power, possessions, and prestige. We find something to win or someone to dominate. This typically happens in early adulthood, though sometimes sooner, sometimes later, and sometimes never.

All of this is completely normal—which is to say, completely human.

And it is also among the most common causes of suffering in the world. The self-protective ego keeps us isolated and alone, deprived of the authentic belonging we all desperately want and need. It creates division and leads to violence of one kind or another. It is the fuel of arrogance. It ruins marriages and families and relationships of every kind. It keeps us from knowing who we are, who our people are, and what we’re here to do.

So I wanted to tear down my ego wall brick by brick, blow up my cannons, and take a sledgehammer to my throne. I wanted it all gone without a trace. But every time I used a full frontal attack to dismantle my ego—for instance, every time I beat myself up for blowing up, or knocked myself down for acting like I was above everyone else—I only strengthened my ego further. Because, ironically, I was trying to dismantle my ego with my ego. I had simply turned my cannons on myself, which meant my ego had found a way to feed on itself.

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