Arenas of Consequence

The wilderness helps to keep our egos at bay.

A great challenge we face in the modern world of comfort and convenience is how do we keep our egos from being inflamed? We need to give them a task. The ego's purpose is survival. When we are no longer living day to day with the risk of being physically terminated, our egos become unmoored, looking for something to guard against, searching for the threat. In our world of social media, mainstream media, underground media, and the like, our egos are easily triggered by the headlines and images catapulted over the wall at us like a burning projectile. The solution to this? Give your ego something to do. Put yourself in an arena of consequence, as my favorite outdoors man calls it. In these environments, the ego can fill its purpose in the most constructive way. Go somewhere where you may get cold, you may scrape your knee, you may stub your toe, you may even get scared. Give your ego the job it is best suited for, to protect you against physical harms so that when you come back to modern comforts, it isn't trying to protect you against corporately constructed harms. 

Egos don't have great PR these days. But I think it is because they aren't adapted for our world, they have become obsoleted in a way. The wilderness has a way of immediately humbling you; why is that? Because when you are in a place where you have no physical status, you must work to protect it. This is where the ego shines, survival. 

So we must seek these places out. Arenas of consequence, to give your ego a job to do. My favorite ego-busting activity is going into the forest to cut and split a pile of wood. And then sitting by the fire that night, I'm physically nurtured by its warmth, but more importantly, I am mentally balanced and humbled.