Ego, or So Much More?

Recently, I’ve been deliberating about this quite a bit.

We’ve all faced situations like this in life - situations where we don’t really know who is in the wrong, yet somehow, we almost instinctively assume that the other person is at fault.

I’ve been watching a particularly difficult situation unfold for someone close to me, where they seem to be getting burnt by someone else’s ego. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that perhaps ego is not as simple as we make it out to be.

No matter how self-aware we believe we are, we all let ego get the better of us in different ways.

The person who started from nothing, worked their way up and finally reached the top may begin to believe that they have figured the system out, that they know better because they have seen more.

A woman who has fought her way into a male-dominated space may, sometimes, become harder on men than anyone else, perhaps because she has spent years fighting to prove that she belongs there.

A man whose female colleague is doing better than him may experience insecurity, inadequacy or even emasculation, and instead of confronting those feelings within himself, he may find ways to bring her down.

Someone born into privilege may look down upon those who are still struggling, simply because struggle is something they have never had to understand.

And sometimes, the reverse happens. Someone who has worked incredibly hard but is now comfortable is dismissed by others because, in their eyes, that comfort was handed to them. They see the house, the car, the lifestyle and the family, but not the years it took to get there.

We do this constantly.

At every level. In every direction.

At work. Among friends. Within families. In relationships.

I once knew someone who had worked incredibly hard from scratch to build the life they have today. There was another mutual friend who came from a considerably more privileged background. What fascinated me was that the first person seemed to resent the second simply because he was no longer struggling.

The guy knew very little about what the other person had actually done with the opportunities he had been given. He saw the privilege, but not the effort. And perhaps he, in turn, had never truly understood what it meant for someone else to have to fight for every inch of what they had.

Recently, I experienced something similar in a completely different setting.

I met someone socially and immediately recognised that the privilege she has currently was very different from mine. She was considerably wealthier, and honestly, it didn’t matter. People have different starting points in life. That is simply a fact.

But I noticed the difference in the conversations directed towards me compared to those directed towards a close friend who had considerably more wealth than I did.

The way they want to be seen, the extension of invitation for dinner so it can be documented on social media. The social currency they get through it. The rest is known to all of us.

And it made me realise how shallow people can become when they start measuring one another.

Especially at this age.

Somewhere between 30 and 40, it almost feels like adulthood turns into an invisible warfare of comparison.

Who has the better career?

Who earns more?

Who lives in the better house?

Who drives the better car?

Who knows the more important people?

Who travels more?

Who looks more successful?

Who is doing better?

And perhaps social media has only made this worse. We constantly curate versions of ourselves that look slightly better, slightly happier, slightly more successful than everyone else. We want to be perceived a certain way, even when nobody has actually asked us to prove anything.

And sometimes I wonder: what is the purpose?

An office should simply mean work. We are all employees trying to do our jobs.

Friendships should simply mean connection. Talking, laughing, sharing, disagreeing, growing together.

Families should be places where we don’t have to constantly prove our worth.

You don’t have to be happy for someone else’s success if you genuinely cannot be. But why must their success diminish you?

Why does someone else’s better life have to mean yours is worse?

Why does another person’s confidence have to become an insult to your own?

Maybe what we call ego is often something else entirely.

Sometimes it is insecurity.

Sometimes it is envy.

Sometimes it is fear.

Sometimes it is the need to be recognised after years of feeling invisible.

Sometimes it is privilege that has never been questioned.

Sometimes it is the pain of having worked too hard and wanting everyone to acknowledge it.

And sometimes, perhaps, it is simply the human need to feel that we are doing okay.

The problem begins when we start using other people as the measuring scale for our own lives.

Because there will always be someone richer than us, more successful than us, more attractive than us, more accomplished than us, more privileged than us. There will also always be someone who has had to fight harder than us.

There is no winning that comparison.

Maybe growing up is not about becoming less egotistical. Maybe it is about becoming more secure in who we are, so that someone else’s existence no longer feels like a threat to ours.

We can acknowledge privilege without dismissing effort. We can acknowledge effort without glorifying struggle. We can celebrate someone else without feeling smaller ourselves.

And perhaps that is the real maturity we are all chasing; not being the person who has the most, knows the most, or has climbed the highest.

But being the person who has finally stopped needing to prove it.

Because at the end of the day, most of us are just trying to make sense of our own lives.

Maybe we should spend less time competing over whose life looks better from the outside, and a little more time making sure the life we are living actually feels good from within.