Imagine the freedom of knowing you’re NOT the main character of your own story.

Long after you yelled at that guy in traffic or sent murder-waves at the lady who cut in line, those people continue to live their lives.  As we reflect on their horrible behavior and our own upright decency, those people are also reflecting on their bills, their anxiety, their children, their hopes and dreams and insecurities, just like you.  While I’m looking out a window commending my own sensibility, they’re also trying to make good and do their best with the little they have.

When you can only think about your own struggle, we end up imprisoned in a tower of hostility where we defend our treasure-trove of self-referencing ego.  It’s living inside your own head, cut off from the world, which is exactly why people kill each other thinking they need to protect their own selfish narratives.

You might have seen some movies where the main character acts like a jerk and crushes people who are in the way, but then later “makes up for it” by deep contemplation next to a lake — but you know, that guy is still a jerk.  He is not suddenly cool just because he is self-aware.  Sometimes self-awareness is really just self-absorbed, and that can only breed a franchise of destruction.

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