Let Go, My Ego.

I'm a pretty swell guy.

I'm also pretty good-looking, have an inviting sense of humor, and understand social and ethical codes of conduct well enough to know when and how to ignore them most effectively. I love a good political mud-slinging, especially when it justifiably exposes the unfathomable short-sightedness of the "conservative agenda."

A short list of my talents goes like this: creating art, fathering, cooking and baking, writing, day-dreaming and making fun (in the most loving way possible) of people when they have no idea I'm doing it.

Yes, sir...I'm pretty damn cool.

In fact, I am so confident in my coolness, so mindful of my magnificence, that often times I allow my ego to step-up as manager of my life, while I go off on some cognitive tangent or something. And, on top of my ego's to-do list: demonstrate and/or prove Shawn's coolness over and over and over again.

But, it's also ego that tells me I'm not good enough, smart enough, handsome enough or endowed with a big enough dick. Inferior and helpless. In other words it tells me I'm not OK.

Nothing new. I know. I've written about the crazy struggle between feeling inferior and feeling uniquely and supremely cooler-than that my ego often incites. Bookstore shelves are replete with information written by well known gurus, and,as if that weren't enough, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Oprah Winfrey tackles the beast in one variation or another.

The bigger problem for me is this: ego tells me I can, and should, keep secrets, or withhold important information from important people. Ironically, for years I've taken pride in my transparency, or at least the idea of it. In fact, I've made the statement "My life is an open book" and posted blogs detailing very intimate moments in my past. Yet, certain things go unsaid still. Ego convinces me that I'm "doing the right thing," or "taking the higher road," or "fostering health and balance in the environment's Eco-system," when I keep certain truths about me secret from the people I care about the most.

Mainly I refer to this: I do not want my kids to know if and/or when I get high. They've been hurt so deeply by my drug addiction that surely the more noble approach, ego argues, is to "protect" them.

Protect them. Protect them.

Pain settles in my stomach as I sit here looking at those words. Shawn the father, the man, wants to protects them, yet, a higher consciousness reminds me that the time to protect them was years ago. The trauma is done. Clinging to the idea that I now have the ability, dare I say even the right, to protect them is nothing more than egos baffling tricks. Like a hungry mouse in a relentless maze, ego has kept me on a perpetual hunt for redemption. Use a self-defeating behavior to mend the pain of self-defeating behaviors done a long time ago? Seems kind of silly now. But, not so much when I remind myself of what sits at the top of my ego's to-do list: demonstrate and/or prove Shawn's coolness over and over and over again.

And besides, my kids know authenticity when they see it. Don't they deserve that?