mrpink essays

Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously

Many of our preferences are not deep convictions, but mental shortcuts that the ego turns into identity. The problem begins when we treat those reflexes as definitive truths.

Thinking We Already Know

One of the most persistent traps of adult life is not being wrong, but believing we are already fully defined.

That we already know what we like and what we do not.
Which ideas represent us and which do not.
What is “for us” and what definitely is not.

We take our past opinions, old intuitions, and former versions of ourselves too seriously. As if they had been spoken by someone especially wise. As if they came with a permanent guarantee of truth.

That is where the problem begins.

Going through life with an open mind does not mean having no standards. It means something more uncomfortable: not treating any idea, not even your own, as final.

Clinging to ideas, identities, or preferences creates rigidity. And rigidity, sooner or later, creates suffering. In Buddhist language, it is simple: attachment to things being the way we like them, and aversion to them being the way we do not.

Things are not the way we want them to be. They are the way they are. And even if we could bend the universe to our liking, it would probably not make us happy for very long.

Many of our everyday preferences do not come from deep reflection. They come from something more basic: the need to save mental energy.

We build shortcuts. “I like this.” “I do not like that.” “I am like this.” “That is not for me.”

The problem begins when we stop seeing those shortcuts as tools and start treating them as truths.

What was once a light preference becomes identity. And then letting go of it feels less like changing your mind and more like betraying yourself.

Maturity is not about having no preferences. It is about holding them lightly.

A preference, but not a need.
An inclination, but not a prison.

My Friend the Ego

The ego quickly takes ownership of those shortcuts.

It takes a preference, a rejection, or a temporary habit and turns it into proof of identity. It is no longer just that I like something more or care less about it. It becomes confirmation of who I believe I am.

Maybe liberation is not about destroying the ego, as people sometimes say, but about seeing it more clearly: as an overprotective companion. It wants to help. It wants to protect us. It wants to prevent pain. But very often it also makes our world smaller.

It tells us not to go, not to try, not to change, not to expose ourselves too much. It pushes us to preserve an image of ourselves even when that image has already grown old.

Respecting it does not mean obeying it every time.
Listening to it does not mean treating it as the final authority.

Maybe maturity is simply learning when to listen and when not to.

Nothing Stays Still

For years I thought surfing had nothing to do with me. It did not help that I am a poor swimmer and that waves had always made me uneasy. But after my wife insisted enough times, I tried it on vacation.

And against all prior belief, I fell in love with the sport.

Not because the fear disappeared.
Not because I suddenly became good at it.
But because the experience shattered a story I thought was already settled.

We underestimate our capacity to change. And we overestimate the solidity of conclusions we have never really tested.

Over time, we accumulate layers of beliefs about the world and about ourselves. “I am like this.” “That is not for me.” “I already know how this works.” “At this point in life, I know myself.”

Meanwhile, both the outer world and the inner one keep changing.

Just because something pleased us — or did not — in the past does not mean it always will.

The best prediction for tomorrow is often to assume it will look a lot like yesterday. And that works… until it does not. In the short term, even an exponential curve looks like a straight line, and life is full of those movements: long periods of apparent stability followed by nonlinear changes that catch us off guard.

Our ideas, our preferences, and our identity are not outside that dynamic.

What would be strange is not changing.
What would be strange is not changing at all.

That is why it is worth trying things we think we do not like. A book, a sport, a meal, a conversation, an event, a person. Not as a moral duty or a self-improvement exercise, but as an act of intellectual honesty.

To experiment is to admit that our model of the world may be wrong. And that our model of ourselves probably is too.

Not Depth. Just Rigidity.

Taking yourself too seriously is not depth.
It is cognitive rigidity.
It is poor mental engineering.

Sometimes what we call seriousness is nothing more than attachment dressed up as intelligence. A rigid identity can feel sophisticated from the inside. But sophistication is not the same as freedom.

As a closing rule, one simple line is worth more than it seems:

Do not take anyone too seriously.
Not even yourself.

Especially yourself.

✦