i remembered something from my teenage years

i was having a discussion with someone and ego came up. ego always comes up in rescue discussions, it is the most effective way to knock someone down when you can't find anything else to pick on them about. does ego come into rescue? always, lets face it ego is a huge part of being human and to pretend it isn't is to put the blinders on. the truth is i am proud of what we have accomplished here at saints. it was really hard work, and from my perspective, it has been really well done. there is no point in denying this. i am proud of the fact that most of the animals are happy and do well here and i am willing to bet that if someone from the outside of all of that hard work and sacrifice who hasn't walked in our shoes, started taking pot shots, they would quickly would end up on my not so favorite person list.

my mother told me when i was a teenager that if i wasn't part of the solution, i was part of the problem. i remember that and now everyone says this. she also told me about ego (my mother was a perpetual life long student while she worked fulltime and raised her family. by the time she died in her early sixties, she had her masters degree) what she told me about ego was...ego only becomes a problem if you don't know it is there. when you invest a large portion of yourself into something and give it your all, there is alot of yourself and your ego wrapped up in whatever it is you are doing. ego drives you forward, ego makes you give your absolute best and ego is not a bad thing. ego becomes a problem when it is denied. once it is denied, you lose sight of the original goal and it becomes a self perpetuating prophesy of secretly feeding the ego hidden from view. i don't know if anyone has ever read ann rand (my mother made me read her). i read her way back when, so maybe my memory is a little flaweed here, but what i remember about her books was an underlying philosophy that being selfish and self centered and ego driven was not such a bad thing. it accomplished alot of good things.

i have been thinking since last night about ego, and where it comes into play here...i do know it is here simply because i got pretty upset (after the fact) when told a couple of visitors with outdated knowledge judged us in a negative way . bottom line if i am being honest, is, they were judging us in a way i (or my ego) did not like. so now i know my ego is alive and well at saints. i don't like feeling judged, it ticks me off.

but...here is the crunch in what i think determines if ego is healthy or not. we as a group or as an individual, know and see when an animal is not doing well here and needs something else. we know and see a great many things here that we can (and will) do better when we have more volunteers and funding. i personally have unwritten rules in place to protect my ego and everyone elses here...anyone who willingly invests blood, sweat and tears into saints has a say in how we progress and how we improve but if they are not willing to make that investment then while questions and suggestions and new ideas are always welcome, quick little superficial judgements without solutions are not. that is my ego doing it's work to protect us from negative thinkers whose own egos might very well be hungry and need some food.

when we think of altruistic acts, we think of acts given freely without agendas or payments, that is how, deep down inside me, i really want to be. but i am not. i am a human being who likes to feel good about the things i work hard to accomplish, my ego wants to feel good too. is that such a very bad thing?