David Richo is an amazing clinician and author. In Richo's classic "How to be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving", Richo talks quite a bit about the importance of letting go of one's ego so as to cultivate a compassionate life where, as adults, we can function as stewards for each other in a mutually-satisfying enough manner.
When it comes to our closest personal relationships, we have no hope of changing ourselves for the better if we are mainly concerned with proving ourselves right (about most anything!). When we are most invested in being right, our ego rules the relationship. When our egos become wonky like that, we are allowing our own pride and arrogance to motivate our decision making for us---as we simultaneously lose more and more our empathy and compassion towards others.
Think about that. You can't get what you want from whomever and whenever if you keep forgetting/dismissing/minimizing the other person's reality. Over time, it is very easy to become hard-hearted towards anybody who stands in your way of getting your own needs satisfied as often as possible.
Understanding the importance of this issue reminds me of an old riddle to do with a huge table filled bowls of delicious food in front of each place setting. A group of starving people were brought in and seated accordingly around the table. Unfortunately, there were no forks, knives or spoons with which to eat the bounty...and no way for each seated person to "reach" over to the food in front of them. All that appeared on the table within each person's reach were extremely long ladles, which no one could make heads or tails of. As a result, some of the people at the table began to cry, for they knew that eating the food they so desperately wanted would never be possible. Others became very excited and started to pick up the ladles before them because they knew they would eat as much as they wanted that very same night. How was this possible? Solve the riddle.... (Solution at the end of this post!)
Today's blog post serves to wake us up to the impact an over-inflated ego has on destroying that which we hold most precious: the love we believe we share with those we care about the most....
As Richo states, our ego works and is functional when it helps us to achieve our important goals in life. A healthy ego is what drives you to stay home and do your homework during high school instead of sneaking out to party with that new kid you met at school the other day. It is our healthy ego that "lets us be fair and alert witnesses" to our own life without the "interference of meddling mindsets".
Translated that means we don't let other people corrupt us from the inside out as what typically happens when we lack a deep sense of who we actually are---and are not. Think about all the parents who "told" their children what they would be doing when they grew up into adulthood. Of course it still goes on today. "You WILL be a doctor!" "You are going to law school and that's that!" "You're taking over our family business because that's what you were born for and to do with your life!"
It is the healthy ego that makes the choices which allow us to remain compatible with our own deepest values, needs, and hope for our own future. A healthy ego whispers to us "In spite of all this external noise I am hearing, I know my path!" A wonky ego, on the other hand, screams at us "I'll show him/her/them!" Show him/her/them what? Well, that depends on the person and how angry, resentful, and bitter they have actually become over time....
When our ego is tilted towards the wonky, our relationship life pays the price. The anatomy of the arrogant and pride-filled ego hates change. I am reminded in this moment of "Master Bob" (Bashara) who had his wife murdered in 2012 by his cognitively-impaired "handyman" Joseph Gentz. "Master Bob" created quite the stand-up-business-man image for himself in Grosse Pointe Park, MI where he resided with his wife Jane. Involved in his church and local area charitable organizations, Bashara was the son of an appellate court judge. Bashara was also heavily involved in the "fet life" (fetish lifestyle) having transformed the basement underneath a local bar he owned into a dungeon master's chamber (of horrors). Denying that his lifestyle had anything to do with the motivation behind his wife's murder, Bashara ended up convicted along with Gentz for conspiring to kill her as and when they did. Bashara was probably the best and worst example of malignant narcissism on blast with major sociopathy attached. His wife Jane was the genuine model citizen; she had amassed a nearly one million dollar fortune as a result of her hard work and desire to provide a decent nest egg for her family. What she didn't realize was the malignant nature of her husband's own ego---and the price she would end up paying by remaining married to him.
In the Bashara case, "Master Bob" was incapable of any kind of positive change. He was typical of what drives such a person to remain as sick as their ego allows: F.A.C.E. is the acronym Richo uses to describe what motivates such individuals: F = Fear. A = Attachment. C = Control. and E = Entitlement. When a person is most motivated by "FACE", their ego runs their life and their life's choices. Bashara's never-ending need to contain and manage his fears, while at the same time being so dysfunctionally attached to needing to control any and all outcomes, is what fed the beast of his entitled attitude and persona. He was not unlike a hungry wolf constantly on the prowl seeking what he could devour...
There is a special place in Hell for people like Bob Bashara and his ilk. When our ego is running our life and relationships, there is nowhere else to go but down...and into the abyss.
Next time, how cultivating mindfulness helps us to be and do better in our own healing and recovery journey...
Until next post...
(Solution to the riddle: Each person was able to reach the food using his own long ladle...and then present the filled ladle to the person across from him at the table to eat from. The same practice, in turn, from the person seated across using his ladle to feed the other opposite himself. In this way, focusing on satisfying the other instead of the self resolved the initial problem presented here...)