The ego, or "I," is an amazing thing/word. It gives power and takes it away. It forms unions and creates catastrophes. It is the foundation for understanding and miscommunication. Although the quote below is from a letter helping to describe a play, I think it pointedly depicts the cause of numerous issues in everyday life.
"There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other’s hearts... Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own ego. That is the way we all see each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition – all such distortions within our own egos – condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions in our own egos, the corresponding distortions in the egos of the others – and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each others naked hearts. Such a case seems purely theoretical to me." - Tennessee Williams, in a letter to Elia Kazan (1947)
How cloudy does your ego make you glass?
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