I’ve tried to be more disciplined in what I respond and
react to—especially on social media. I find that when I resist the impulse to
jump into the fray on every topic or respond to every incendiary headline, I
find greater peace of mind. My opinion is just that—mine. It’s not imperative
to my well-being to share it. I’ve tried to recognize that doing so in the past
only served to feed my egotism. Today’s virtual public square is a cacophony of
inflammatory rhetoric and ideological disharmony; I’ve found that sometimes the
easiest way to decrease the noise is not to add to it. Looking back, I’ve found
that, at times, it was more important to jam my point into a discussion than it
was to consider the broader implications for those involved in said discussion.
Does my need to hammer home my point have to steamroll over someone who may
have a greater emotional investment in the topic at hand? The short answer: No.
In resisting the self-serving need to hastily weigh in on
every topic, I find that I’m able to strengthen my sense of self-control,
avoiding unnecessary online altercations and vexations in which—undoubtedly—one
or more parties walks away feeling wronged or, worse, persecuted. The world around
us is cause enough for anxiety; why add to the collective tension and temperature
of the pot through an egocentric compulsion to force opinions and the need to
be “right?” In the last of Freud's major theoretical works, 1923’s The Ego and the Id, he made the analogy of the id being a horse while the ego is the rider.
The ego is “like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior
strength of the horse.” That’s largely what this exercise has been for me—trying
to keep my instinctual desire to opinionate in check by taking tighter reins of
my ego and engaging in secondary process thinking. Do I succeed at controlling
the impulse every single time? Hell, no. Do I still succumb to my ego-demon on
occasion, the one who feels the need to be snarky or clever or right? Hell,
yes.
But this work in progress keeps trying to get it right, to
find the balance, to hurt and demean people less with my words. I take
inspiration in this quest from the essayist Joan Didion, from her award-winning
2007 memoir on grief, The Year of Magical Thinking: “Why do you always have to
be right? Why do you always have to have the last word? For once in your life
just let it go.”
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