Farewell to a lifelong companion
Its essence was aptly said by Hans Christian Andersen in just one sentence in The Emperor’s New Suit: “Everybody in the town knew what a remarkable quality the stuff possessed, and all were anxious to see how bad or stupid their neighbors were.” But just like everything else, there’s no better way to understand arrogance other than directly experiencing it. Yes, I have been arrogant; and here I am doing my public self-flagellation. Consciously breaking down is liberating, unconscious breakdowns are….I don’t know I haven’t experienced them yet.
So yes my past has been characterized by several highest pee 
contests, trying to win them every time. My mouth full of litanies coming from isms and beliefs I pleasurably scream, things I haven’t directly experienced, life I haven’t lived. It has been a heavy personal journey of suitcases of pretensions and masks. Oh my, bagging the Miss Universal Know-It-All and The Queen of the Masquerade Ball crowns would not cause me a single sweat. But what I know - or rather what I have just been parroting – is not just my flavor of arrogance. My arrogance came in different guises, among them are:
- that my suffering is the highest form of suffering
- that people don’t know what I’ve been through and currently going through so they are nothing compared to me
- that their life experiences aren’t as profound as my life experiences
- that the way they live their life is wrong and mine is the right way
- that people don’t know what to do and I should help them
Name it and I most probably had it. Fortunately, my journey led me into a crossroad: I had to choose between maintaining arrogance or admitting ignorance.
Maintaining arrogance has its good side: Arrogance can strengthen perseverance. But thinking about the highest pee contests I have engaged in, I realized that my journey need not smell of urine and my life need not be my urinal - especially someone else's. Admitting ignorance is just the hygienic way to go.
The things I’ve been parroting: I can intellectually dissect them, sometimes forcefeed them to other people, sometimes put them in banners as slogans and ostentatiously parade them to let people know how much I have learned to parrot; but my words are nothing but just words for I can only believe them and not live them myself. I'll just be deluding myself if I'm going to say that I have directly experienced them. My realizations continued with admitting that there is no such thing as hierarchy of suffering because each suffering is just suffering. And please, people don’t really know what I’ve been through or been going through because they have never been in my entire life, in every millisecond of it. Most importantly, I do not know what they’ve been through or going through either. So why do I kept defacating this bullshit? As for the profundity of life experiences, profundity my ass. I don’t really know what is profound or shallow when it comes to life experiences as they aren’t measurable things just like the ocean, the river, or the stream. So how do I know whether mine is profound and other’s are shallow or the other way around? Other people’s way of living is not necessarily wrong or right, it is just their way of life. Just like me, they are in circumstances, which I do not know, that make them live in the way they do. And I do not know those circumstances and why should I butt in into their private lives? “People don’t know what to do” this is such a condescending way to view other people. What am I thinking? Ahhh….that is the problem I am thinking for them, thinking that they need me to think for them.
Reflecting on how my pompous ass farted pretensions made me realize that arrogance is the sophistication of ignorance; and the beliefs, isms, and all those hand-me down knowledge with which I have surrounded myself are the threads of the fabric of The Emperor’s New Suit. This suit has been my suit all these years. And I am just so afraid of admitting it because I will lose face(s). Though there’s the fear of loss involve - a very strong one, losing face(s) has been cathartic for me. In losing these face(s) I have found my nakedness. Undergoing this conscious imperial breakdown is never easy. The ego just doesn’t like it…
But I have a choice: keep the ego and climb the stairs of the imperial tower or drop the ego
and fly the flight of freedom from its imposing attitude and manipulative politics. On paper, dropping the ego is easy but this isn’t for me. All my life I have had my ego with me, in every second, in every inch of my skin it has been with me. It has been there all along. Dropping it and letting go of it is just hard. But as I inspect my ego, I realized that it need not be dropped. The ego must be healed for it is just one fresh wound. Just like any wound that dries, the ego dies its natural death, and there is nothing left to do but fly. Each day I see the wound drying up, but at times it freshens up a bit because from time to time it seeks to validate itself. But I am letting it go... And of course, I have learned the lesson: When flying, don’t look down for arrogance is the worst kind of gravity: it comes from within.
contests, trying to win them every time. My mouth full of litanies coming from isms and beliefs I pleasurably scream, things I haven’t directly experienced, life I haven’t lived. It has been a heavy personal journey of suitcases of pretensions and masks. Oh my, bagging the Miss Universal Know-It-All and The Queen of the Masquerade Ball crowns would not cause me a single sweat. But what I know - or rather what I have just been parroting – is not just my flavor of arrogance. My arrogance came in different guises, among them are:- that my suffering is the highest form of suffering
- that people don’t know what I’ve been through and currently going through so they are nothing compared to me
- that their life experiences aren’t as profound as my life experiences
- that the way they live their life is wrong and mine is the right way
- that people don’t know what to do and I should help them
Name it and I most probably had it. Fortunately, my journey led me into a crossroad: I had to choose between maintaining arrogance or admitting ignorance.
Maintaining arrogance has its good side: Arrogance can strengthen perseverance. But thinking about the highest pee contests I have engaged in, I realized that my journey need not smell of urine and my life need not be my urinal - especially someone else's. Admitting ignorance is just the hygienic way to go.
The things I’ve been parroting: I can intellectually dissect them, sometimes forcefeed them to other people, sometimes put them in banners as slogans and ostentatiously parade them to let people know how much I have learned to parrot; but my words are nothing but just words for I can only believe them and not live them myself. I'll just be deluding myself if I'm going to say that I have directly experienced them. My realizations continued with admitting that there is no such thing as hierarchy of suffering because each suffering is just suffering. And please, people don’t really know what I’ve been through or been going through because they have never been in my entire life, in every millisecond of it. Most importantly, I do not know what they’ve been through or going through either. So why do I kept defacating this bullshit? As for the profundity of life experiences, profundity my ass. I don’t really know what is profound or shallow when it comes to life experiences as they aren’t measurable things just like the ocean, the river, or the stream. So how do I know whether mine is profound and other’s are shallow or the other way around? Other people’s way of living is not necessarily wrong or right, it is just their way of life. Just like me, they are in circumstances, which I do not know, that make them live in the way they do. And I do not know those circumstances and why should I butt in into their private lives? “People don’t know what to do” this is such a condescending way to view other people. What am I thinking? Ahhh….that is the problem I am thinking for them, thinking that they need me to think for them.
Reflecting on how my pompous ass farted pretensions made me realize that arrogance is the sophistication of ignorance; and the beliefs, isms, and all those hand-me down knowledge with which I have surrounded myself are the threads of the fabric of The Emperor’s New Suit. This suit has been my suit all these years. And I am just so afraid of admitting it because I will lose face(s). Though there’s the fear of loss involve - a very strong one, losing face(s) has been cathartic for me. In losing these face(s) I have found my nakedness. Undergoing this conscious imperial breakdown is never easy. The ego just doesn’t like it…
But I have a choice: keep the ego and climb the stairs of the imperial tower or drop the ego
and fly the flight of freedom from its imposing attitude and manipulative politics. On paper, dropping the ego is easy but this isn’t for me. All my life I have had my ego with me, in every second, in every inch of my skin it has been with me. It has been there all along. Dropping it and letting go of it is just hard. But as I inspect my ego, I realized that it need not be dropped. The ego must be healed for it is just one fresh wound. Just like any wound that dries, the ego dies its natural death, and there is nothing left to do but fly. Each day I see the wound drying up, but at times it freshens up a bit because from time to time it seeks to validate itself. But I am letting it go... And of course, I have learned the lesson: When flying, don’t look down for arrogance is the worst kind of gravity: it comes from within. 
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