Our Coping Mechanisms

The Laughing Buddha knows the irony of life in this world and that's why he's laughing. It's amazing how we take life so seriously. We walk about with somber faces and fearsome eyes, hunched over with the weight of the world. I've been there, done that, and sometimes still do, sometimes painfully so. It's called survival mode. Ego is the instigator of this insanity and will fight like the very Devil to maintain it. In fact, some people believe ego is the Devil.
Actually, ego is a seven-year-old child, the child each of us used to be. When you're that young and that small, the world and everything in it does seem a very frightening spectacle. So each of us developed our own special coping mechanisms to get us through this monstrous place until we grew up and could deal with it as adults. The problem is those coping mechanisms seemed to work so well we brought them with us. We're still trying to deal with life from the vantage point of seven-year-old children.
Ego is not evil. It's not great but neither is it evil. It just is, in a smoke-and-mirrors kind of way. It's an illusion that we all hold onto, as long as we need it. It serves the purpose of getting us through life, out there in the world. Without a sense of "I" as a separate being, we would not have progressed to the point where we are today. We had to have this sense of separation, this illusion, in order to move out into the world and conquer it, for better or for worse. We had to subdue in order to progress. It's a coping mechanism, pure and simple
So how can we deal with this child we call ego? How to deflate its' arrogance? How do we tame this runaway insanity? Certainly not by "killing" it. How do you kill your sense of individuality? How do you kill uniqueness? You deal with it by understanding. This is the child we once were. Can you remember that child?
I remember my child was a frightened little rabbit. I thought I was too skinny, had too big a nose, hated my glasses, was a true bookworm, and had a smile (according to one of my aunts) that would brighten anyone's day. I smiled a lot, I recall.
Those were the war years (WWII) and my mother was German, in America. You can imagine how popular we were. Dad was overseas in the Navy, so we had to cope alone. Mama's coping mechanism death. She waited until Dad came home and then died of a cerebral hemorrhage. I was all of five or six years of age.
My older brother and I were packed off to a home for boys for two years until Dad remarried. It was during those two years that I learned my first great coping mechanism. Attach yourself to someone stronger than yourself and let them fend off any threats. That first someone was my older brother. Bless him, he fought a lot of battles for me that I should have fought myself.
The point is, when you're that young you don't have a lot of options. You try something and if it works you add it to your arsenal. It's how you cope with life when it throws you a curve. Children learn fast and they always keep what works. Always.
The point of all of this is we have to get to know our inner child because that child may still be running our life. In survival mode. And that's all it knows. If your life is on automatic, odds are there's a little seven-year-old child behind the steering wheel.