The Fragile Self
How Stoicism can help us let go of what’s holding us back
It’s our false understanding of the self that frustrates us, that makes us anxious and sad, that makes us fearful. Courage is freedom, and freedom brings happiness.
Imagine this — you’re given a large, delicate egg, and told, “This egg is your master, you must protect it.”
Then you’re instructed to carry that egg for weeks on end and that you must keep it intact at all costs or be severely punished.
You’d be constantly petrified that the egg might break, you’d have to act in ways that are unnatural, unfree, and uncomfortable to you.
Think of the ego as like that egg.
As we grow up, this idea of the self becomes all-important to us, and the idea is constantly reinforced in our social interactions and in the way our world operates.
We have this fragile image of the self created in our heads that we must protect at all costs — we become self-ish, we obsess over lack and scarcity as threats to this idea of self, so to protect it we can often be greedy and obnoxious.
We think that keeping this ego intact and buffering it with everything we think it needs will produce happiness. We think that happiness is the result of doing and attaining things…
