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| An iPhone shot from one of my hikes. |
And an overdeveloped ego is what makes us feel hopelessly lost. When I mention the term “outsized ego,” most people will think of the quintessential douche character with triple popped collars and two tubs of wax in his/her hair.
No, that’s pop culture imagery. Let’s not mistake conceit with ego.
An overdeveloped ego is the result of cyclical thoughts that revolve around the singular idea of self-concern.
Self-consciousness is a form of ego inflation. When we become concerned with what everyone thinks of us, we place ourselves in the center of our own solar system.
Self-doubt is another form of it. When we refuse to accept our talents because we think we aren’t good enough, we prioritize our sense of self over the Universe’s desire to gift those abilities to us.
Well, here’s the good news.
Nature obliterates the ego. It rips it up into shreds using the claws of humility.
I came across this thought at the completion of one of my hikes, which ended at a large, beautiful, icy body of water aptly named Iceberg Lake. As I finished taking my obligatory pictures of it, a wonderfully crazy idea popped into my head.
Whoa. I gotta… swim around in it.
Now, it only takes one glance at this lake to know with absolute certainty that it is BLISTERINGLY cold. I mean, there are actual icebergs in the lake itself, acting as staunch reminders of their dominion over this realm.
But the cogs of that thought already shifted gears into physical movement.
I quickly removed my shirt and shorts and walked right in.
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| Me right before I got wrecked. |
I regularly take cold showers, but this was a whole another level of cold. I managed to get my entire body in the lake, but the cold repeatedly knocked the wind out of my breath. I started making noises I’ve never uttered before, like one of those painful sounds that only have consonants (something like “Rrrrghhhhhdddff!!”).
I’m a seasoned swimmer, but I had to doggy paddle my way back to land because I lost all feeling in my limbs. Once I got back to shore, I laid out like a starfish, waiting for my body to finish scolding me for my sins. It took a few minutes, but feeling in my legs and arms gradually came back, collectively breathing a sigh of relief.
Then I thought to myself, Wow, what if we were suddenly flooded by water that cold? It doesn’t matter what precautions we may have. We would be wiped out in an instant.
And it’s that thought that reminded me of a very powerful reality:
We are governed by the rules of nature, not by the rules of humanity. We exist only because the earth has allowed us to be here.
We are so caught up in today’s cultural and societal norms that we often forget this fact. We forget that we are able to exist only because of the natural resources that were gifted to us. We think of how much we need to get paid, but lose sight of the precious origins of the resources we are actually paying for.
In the eyes of nature, we are just ants that are leasing its space.
I had this thought constantly throughout my time in the park. When I would reach a clearing that opened up into a beautiful valley of blue and green, I understood how small I truly was.