| Have An Ego! Be Proud!
By Murtaza Hameer We have been taught by parents and society to be humble, to be modest, not to have an ego, not to be proud. To possess the latter two as individual qualities is bad. This is the teaching of all faiths. It must be realized that having an ego and being proud is not the same as being arrogant. The former two are necessary qualities for excelling in whatever one does. The latter only looks down on others and so does no one any good. True, the latter must be discouraged. But the former two, nay! They must be cultivated and nurtured as an individual responsibility by all those who have vision and are aiming for the stars. Ego is a good thing, probably one of the best of things. So is being proud. They go hand in hand with confidence thereby unleashing the ultimate potential of a person. Ego, pride and confidence are of the same essence. And this essence is the oil that makes the wheel of the human mind go round and run at peak performance. And from this the genius of an individual is ignited. Let us consider doctors as an example. It is the ego of the neurosurgeon that the rest of society likes to criticize that enabled the former to become the person she is. The neurosurgeon is capable of amazing feats such as separating craniopagus twin babies, those that are joined with one another at their heads. When a person comes with an anterior dislocation of the shoulder, the egotistical orthopedic surgeon will make the patient lie down, put his foot on the arm pit of the patient, grab the affected upper limb and apply a traction/force and voila, the Hippocratic method might just reduce the limb back in position. Otherwise, he may go for the Kocher’s manoeuvre or the Milch’s manoeuvre and if these fail, he will resort to a surgical reduction. Doctors heal, cure and perform scientific miracles. Through their long years of training and hard work they become responsible for so much information and masters of many skills, thereby attaining the attributes which humans have reserved for God. They become God. We have all heard of the phrase “they are playing God”. In all faiths God is given the attributes such as “Great” and “Powerful” which are just another way of glorifying His ego and pride; and nobody calls that bad. If we have no problem of ascribing ego and pride to a non-existent being like God, then we should certainly have no problem in describing ourselves with the same. Therefore my dear soul, have an ego, be proud. And be of good heart. |