EGO

Two young boys looked straight into the distance, as their knees bent forward, arms crouched at the feet, and the rest of the torso set itself into such a posture as it was so ready to pounce into the air any moment then, with all the mighty force that stayed hidden in the muscles that stayed wrapped within. The hot blood pumped vigorously with every breath of the lungs and every beat of the heart. Where in the distance their thirsty eyes restlessly looked, a hundred meters further from where they now crouched like hungry beasts, was a thin white line. The boys were furious, and their hearts raged with the desire to reach the line, as if there lay the key to the greatest thing that was ever sought by men who walked the earth. As a hundred pairs of eyes blinked wide into the day, with an excitement and thrill, the kind of which can only be caused by the definite uncertainty of an inevitable future, the gun shot up the unseen bullet that vanished into the dusty robe of humid air that wrapped the ground below, and it was as if the boys were what were really shot out into space, with immense energy and the deafening blast of a noise. Their feet now raced, step after step, leap after leap, and miles of a blurred irrelevant mass seemed to flow past them with an enormous turbulence. The nerves discharged heavily, the feet sucked up all the energy of the body and spat it out as they ran towards the great line of purpose and victory. In a span of time that felt too short for the watching eyes, and too long for the racing feet, the victor passed the line in a sweep when a roaring noise of applause emanated from people screaming their calories out of their throats vehemently. The victor stood there, past the line, his lungs still trying desperately to swallow as greedy a chunk of oxygen as the pores on the face permitted to let in. And, as he stood there, he wore a huge smile on his face and an enormous and warm ‘something’ filled his heart. The applause seeped through his ears and merrier he became.

The ego was a funny thing. There was the white line, and there was the race, and there was the enormously fulfilling sense of victory. There were the folks who were all part of the huge wheel in eternal motion. There were folks that strived to make a difference to the world, which was only a lesser goal, for what they really sought was the satiation of the self or the ego, as you would choose to call it. There were varieties of races, those of the feet, those of the skilled arms, those of hearts, of valor and courage, and those of the intellect. And, varied restless folks sought after the white lines in their own myriad manners, with the hope of stumbling upon the next stroke of victory, to feel that ‘something’ fill the hearts, to prove to themselves that they could race across in a world of hungry folks, and all the white line was but one infinitesimal dimensionless point of an object in the enormity and infinite vastness of the emptiness that is. The ego was a funny thing.

Here I dwelt, amidst folks who ran the race of the intellect. Here, the brains sparked with burning ambition, and here dwelt the folks who hoped everyday of their lives, to demonstrate their valor, integrity, and sense of ‘good’, through deeds that were of perceived intellectual value to a select few. Among the intelligentsia, I dwelt. I laughed often, for, I had feet that were funnier than the ego of the intelligentsia, for, the feet paced fast, though my eyes that were placed at an enormous distance away into space, lacked a sense of what and where the white line was. However, with no huge sense of shame, but a little apologetically though, I admit my own sense of an ego, and the times when I have felt the hot pumping blood, the weary feet at times of hard work, the sweet sound of applause and the warm ‘something’ fill the heart. The ego was funny, but what the heck?? It was a stunningly successful sustenance technique, and no wonder, was naturally imbibed into organisms with brains like ours, capable of conjuring complex, random and abstract emotional states. And what was more important to life, than sustenance itself was?