Written By (Illegible Signature)
Morning Thoughts #265
A healthy ego is like a signature. Not legible, but very much your own.
Let me explain. Leaving your mark is not about tagging your name so that all can read it and trace it back to you. It is about imbuing the creation with an honest flow from the self, the stream that sources the pond. Your winter thaw, the realization, melts into this or that understanding or theory, each one still coming from that same source.
A perfect signature tells me you’ve spent too much time crafting it, and not enough time on whatever it is you're signing.
Don’t introduce the members of your band until it’s time to say goodbye.
Don’t introduce the author before every chapter.
Don’t let the signature speak louder than the painting.
It’s a sun, not a signature, in the top corner of your first drawings that serves as the symbol of the illumination of the whole. Do not forget this.
Your name, if it appears at all, should be scratched into one of the bottom corners. Your penmanship is not the point, and certainly not your strength.
The ego is an albatross until it realizes it is not the size of the wings that matter, but rather the height they can attain and then maintain. In a shortsighted world, sometimes our vanity would have us remain grounded, if only to ensure an immediacy to our recognizability.
Do not soar into the sun for a spotlight. A healthy ego wants to rise, not to be seen in detail, but simply as its natural state.
The first part of life is learning that enlarging yourself is not enough to find something bigger than yourself.
When we realize there is no way to make ourselves bigger than ourselves (because that is basic logic) we begin to grow in a different way. Growth comes not by force, but by understanding that much of it behaves like a climbing plant. It needs the right wall, the right surface, to stretch beyond its own limits.