Ego-Nomics

I was staring blankly at the floor this morning on the subway, noticing the things I imagine few people might stop to notice. Like the slant towards the middle of the train that runs beneath the rails. The way the ads peel on the walls, and somehow the one peeking from behind it's ripped canvas makes it better, or more comical. How very stubborn people stick out like sore thumbs, as everyone on the train sways in unison with it's jittery motion; they remain stiff, refusing to be forced to jerk around by something as measly as a commuter train. How dare this vessel conduce me to unwarranted movement. I noticed the speckled floor. Billions of tiny multicolored dots, perfectly random and misplaced. Like people.

I love that people have egos. It's the most interesting thing to me that some can be so absorbed in themselves and effected by it. Anything that causes you to be less self-aware holds the danger of being a weakness. Egos are no exception. With them come responsibility, and a issue of perspective. We are dots on a subway floor. Not higher beings, not God, not even as regal as birds. Who can see what we cannot, from an angle we'll never understand. So why do we insist on building these high horses? Who could we possibly be looking down on.

I'm a victim myself. I have an amazing ego. I'll be damned if anyone tells me that my eyes ain't pretty, or my style ain't cute, or that in some way I'm not the absolute shit. I would never SAY that (although I realize I just did). But the entire point of an ego is so we don't have to say these things. We simply think them. Recite and know them as facts. Our constructed reality. So when a woman similar to my cachet, steps into the room. With the jeans on that I can't afford, and the journalism career that I know I'll never have; I am to feel demoted. But alas, my ego will sustain me. Prop my head up high and cause me to do silly things like compliment said girl on her outfit in a way that only women can. A joke within an insult within a compliment. Awww......I was gonna buy those jeans, but they went outta style before I could afford 'em.

If we are, what they say we are, mere humans. And if this life is short and fleeting and lasts only as long as one breath from God....why are we all out to prove so much? Why do people battle each other for and with everything from love to money? Why is the competition so severe when we are all ultimately in the same race against time? I don't have the answers to any of this. But I know, because I'm always asking these questions, my ego will never get the best of me.