My Ego Needs a Break/The 'Genius'


    Who is TED and what is he talking about? Clearly his words rang clear to Elizabeth Gilbert because she really took the stage with some *excellent* prose about my new favorite cognitive construct- the genius.

 

    The greater message of Gilbert’s talk resonated well with me. I’ve kind of been in a place where I’ve been struggling to stay motivated, senioritis I guess, and I’ve really been getting myself down for it. This is just an example of the greater conflicts I experience with myself and the world around me. It becomes a vicious cycle of trying to contain everything in my life within my own ego, and then blaming myself when things go wrong. This problem is not one limited only to me clearly, and I think Gilbert’s way of thinking has really begun to recontextualize the way I digest the world around me. The main takeaway was the overload of the ego. Since the Renaissance, the self has become the center of the universe, at least in western culture. This is inherently setting us up for failure because a single person is insignificant compared to the scale of the world around them, yet we try to fit the entire world into the ego and expect it to be able to hold it securely. I’ve started removing myself from the center of my world, and instead have begun to think of concepts such as my emotions and feelings, like motivation in this case, as outside forces coming into me, and I the vessel that delivers them. I’ve realized that I can’t stop pinning everything that happens in the world around me- and the world inside of me- on myself. After all, I’m only one single person, and it’s a pretty big world. Now when I’m unmotivated, I don’t try to force myself to find it or get down on myself for not having it. I just assume my genius is taking lunch with a friend and let them be, because I owe them one for this post at least.



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