Egophobia is just a word, like oasis, voodoo or esperanto. Nothing to fear of, except ourselves, but why should someone be afraid of him/herself? After all, whom to trust if not myself? Although anyone could assert something like basing his/her course on this, the lithe rowdy called fear is always somewhere nearby, too close to deny or avoid its deadenly flavoured iced torch. We are the stars of our dope show, but also the enemies, lords and labourers concomitantly, as well as its ghosts. By egophobia one understands usually "fear of the own ego", but there may be more beyond. What could be understood from these words? Lack of confidence? Too, but not only. There's also a fear of what we are aware of being able to do. You may be a quiet, peaceful creature, not harming even a mosquito or things that ask to be killed like it, but in a tough situation, when your life is endangered, would you not fight and even kill to survive? So aren't you afraid of yourself as a potential killer? Egophobia starts working, but not this is the egophobia I am actually talking about. My kind of egophobia is usually avoided because of what some call life, some existence, some vegetation, some don't even bother to think how should they call it. After all, life sucks, right? Yeah, it sucks our time, our energy, our dreams, our idea(l)s, our love and so on until we finally get rid of its dictatorship.

My egophobia could be defined as the fear of what I allowed myself become. Of course it was my life's dream to sit in front of my computer at 2AM on a Sunday morning, alone in this not quite filthy but desperately missing some cleaning room, writing nonsense in order to purge it somehow from my head, is there any unbeliever around? Unaware of this egophobia and letting myself carried away by the enemy mentioned above, let me call it simply "the enemy", seems a decent job. After all, there's pleasure, too, within this enemy, for examples ask any kind of priest, there's elation, there's sleep, there's illusion and adrenalin, but there's also egophobia and now I feel it. And I am still the same myself, even warned by this bitter revelation. This fear does not keep me from killing time or not writing what I would like to do sometimes. So is it really fear or just another kind of self-awareness I choose to ignore?


No answers, just some more uncertainity. Egophobia can be the fear of what one becomes, the lighter version of what was just said, but why write about it when we could sleep within a more general framework?

Egophobia may be taken also religiously. Considering ourselves a sum, or better, a fight between good and evil, egophobia could be assimilated to the struggle against the undesirable part. The religious aspect implies some sort of cowardness, usually presenting the evil in us as an influence not as a component. Thus religion denies egophobia? Wrong answer! Egophobia must be active in order to keep the believer awake when feeling attacked by lure. Imagine this side of egophobia defined for some future artificial brain. The definition I arrived at ain't anything but funny, therefore I am open to suggestions, even if this thing does not wear any trace of importance for me, it may prove to be useful at some later moment. Just think about, glory deriving from egophobia, doesn't it sound like a spring? It can arise also from the previous form of egophobia, but there are required some efforts and a considerable deal of awareness not always met anywhere.

Also our beloved "I hate myself" may fall under the spell of egophobia. Hate usually hides fear or reluctance. And here we are, back to our holy ground! From egophobia as positive factor, as it can eradicate laziness and bring everything if properly awared and practised, to egophobia as suicidal tendence or reason. It just depends on the random god of whateverness. What more could someone desire? I hate myself cause my egophobia did not show itself to me yet, this is a possible direction. Do you dare to run or just a simple walk is enough?

Also think about what may mean egophobia for a genius. It's not my turn anymore. The ball is in the air and players are required. Egophobia ain't out there like the final frontier or something. It's here, inside us, waiting hungry. The ball is falling...


#published in the third issue of "EgoPHobia":
www.egophobia.ro