Ego

Ego always fascinates and amuses me. Very often I look at my own ego and get surprised about its power and the way it shapes my opinions. Where is it? What is its role? The Indian philosophy has dealt this subject with great detail. Basically it originates from “I” and “I am right”. One day I was going to office by cycle. One dog was sitting on center of the road. As my cycle approached near to dog, it did not budge from its place.  It was sitting as if it owns the road. I was so furious and irritated, took bicycle just near the dog (even though there was enough space). But it was just sitting there and never bothered. Furious Shashi!!!!!!!!!. I went around the dog and proceeded further. Suddenly I realized why so much irritation? Oh, I am the mighty human being, I am on the wheels, one of the greatest invention of man, I am going to “the office”, I do research, how can this dog could treat “mighty me” like this and humiliate me so much? My ego is hurt, I felt like stopping the cycle and beat the dog. I got even furious about the government, how could they leave a stray dog like this, it might bite kids !!!. Well, with in 100 mts I realized the role of my ego, oh look at that it was sitting somewhere deep inside me just sprung up, oh without even my knowledge, it was in charge of my emotions. Consciously I brought back my senses to ground. I forced my being to be humble and sensitive to others opinions and pains. I just narrated one incident. It doesn’t mean that I have won over my ego, it is just a war between both of us and conditioning my senses to be humble; well, this is just like training for running or swimming, having a healthy mental status too need a constant exercise.

This deteriorating dead crab was lying on the wooden plank. It stirred lot of emotions in me, especially concept of ego. The most important one is looking at its claws. In spite of death and decaying body, the claw remained strong and shining. It reminded me of many of us even though we don’t have power to do the things and are helpless; but our ego is much larger than our persona. 

 

 I tried different angles, and luckily I was having an off camera flash (using for the first time). Only constraint was my daughter, she wanted to touch that dead crab with a stick and she was becoming more and more impatient. So whatever 5 min allotted by her, I tried these things. I tried to process them in different ways just to see, how does it look? Here are the photos.