There’s this guy I know, who is a really cool guy in every respect but one. He’s got a tremendous ego and likes engaging in little ego-contests. It’s an absolutely forgivable flaw of his, though it gets on my nerves sometimes. I know I’m guilty of it, too, but I try to keep it to a minimum, as it usually only leads to a bad atmosphere for those directly or indirectly exposed to it. It’s a game of domination, of “Who’ll be the Alpha Male!?” and I simply don’t like it. I don’t have that type of competitiveness to really enjoy it.
Some time ago he did something I was rather disappointed with. It was a little something, and the annoyance of it passed quickly. I asked him not to do it, he did it anyway and that was it. It was in retalation of a slight or insult (imagined or otherwise), I think, and I didn’t get mad because I understood it, though I really don’t agree with it. What he did was childish and more evidence of his fragile ego. As I write this I have the sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t have a big ego, per sé, but perhaps a very small and fragile one.
Anyway, today I was sitting on the train and something reminded me of that moment, where he decided to this little, annoying, retaliatory thing, even though I had asked him, politely, not to. I found myself getting so angry at his audacity that I started to think back to that moment, when it happened, and what I should have done – what I could have done – instead. It was all rather violent and domineering. I realise only now that it is me that has the small ego, it is me that is easily hurt, even though I try to rise above all of it, as I did then, I can’t help but be angry at what he did, and how he went against my request to stop doing what he was doing.
On the one hand it sickens me to think that I am that ego-mongering, alpha male wannabe, no better than he in the way that I’m constantly working towards establishing dominance in a group, but on the other hand I’m glad that I have a better grip on myself, and that I can put it aside, repress it, and burry it until I’m sitting on a train somewhere, months later.
