Since the past decade and more, my better half has been reminding me how my ‘ego’ gets the better of me. Ye ol’ married men, you relate to this, right?

Initially I would take offense at such remarks, fighting tooth and nail with my wife to defend my airs, but my partner is no pushover – she has the strength of a thousand warriors and the wit of a fox. For every ‘tooth and nail’ I have in my armour, she has a ‘jaw and spear’ in her’s! With her, I often feel I bring a butter knife to a sword fight.

Over the years and many a gray hair later, I learned to brush off her comments like crumbs off my shirt, but there’s always a nagging knock in the back of my head. I mean, sure, I have strong opinions and a drive that can move hills (!), but that’s not ‘ego’, right? It’s just me being me*. I agree that my opinions and drive may put some people I have to deal with a bit off-balance, but is this the same as me being an ‘egotist’? Nah!

One recent sunny day, my partner dropped a bombshell. She said that she has started to think I’m not an egotist, however, she added slyly that my shade of confidence and free spiritedness many times may come across as ‘ego’. Huh? After all these years and butter knife fights, I’m now getting a new definition of myself? Or, is there more to it than what meets the eye?!

Perhaps, it’s about time to take a deep dive into the murky waters of the ego and see what’s really going on. Maybe I’ll come out the other side with a better understanding, or maybe I’ll just end up even more confused. Either way, it’s time to face the music and dance. So, here we go.

In the world of psychology, ‘ego’ is the part of ourselves that has to deal with the external world and all the weird, wacky things it throws at us. It’s like the mediator between our primal urges (id) and the society’s expectations (superego). We may look at our ego as our personal assistant who helps us make decisions, solves our problems, and even manages our social life. Quite a multitasker!

But beware, my dear friends, for the ego can at times get a little too big for its boots. When that happens, we end up being like a hot air balloon floating off into the sunset with no regard for anyone else. It’s like saying, “I’m the star of the show, and you’re all just extras.” Not cool, not cool at all!

On the flip side, if our ego is feeling a little under the weather, we may start questioning our worth and esteem, and feel like we’re not enough. We start to believe that we were made to toe the line, thus experiencing feelings of inadequacy at not being in charge of our time and decisions. It’s a hard knock life when our ego is down in the dumps.

But, that’s not the end of it. Things are not so binary. Quite often, an expression of one’s confidence may be taken as that inflated ego which is too big for its boots. On the other hand, an expression of trysts with realities of life can be looked on as loss of self-worth and esteem.

Ego, in my opinion, has a good participation in the binary spaces, where it manifests as “too big for its boots” or as “questioning one’s worth and esteem”, but ego has very little participation in the non-binary space where ‘confidence’ and ‘normalisation and conformism’ rule the roost. If I leave my opinion aside, and agree that it is ‘ego’ all over, whether in binary or non-binary spaces, then it would be interesting to find the origins of ego and know where it resides in our bodies. Here again, let’s take help from our good old friend ‘psychology’.

According to our friend, ‘ego’ isn’t chillin’ in a specific body part like a kidney or a spleen. It’s an elusive idea that covers our thoughts, feelings, and actions like a cozy blanket. It’s like trying to catch a fart in a jar – you know it’s there, but you can’t really grab onto it. It gets even wackier. Some eggheads out there think that the ego is related to brain stuff. Specifically, the prefrontal cortex, which is like the VIP section of the brain, supposedly plays a big role in how we develop and control our emotions or egos. Sounds fancy, right?

But don’t go thinking this is all cut and dry. ‘Ego’ is still a hot topic of discussion in the world of psychology and neuroscience. Some folks are all like, “Yeah, the prefrontal cortex is the ego HQ,” while others are like, “Nah, that’s not the whole story.” Who knows, maybe one day we’ll figure it out, or maybe we’ll just end up more confused than a chameleon in a bag of Skittles.

While the wise ones figure out, allow me to shortlist a few prospective places in our bodies where ‘ego’ might be holidaying or hiding.