How often do you think about your big toe? Probably not too often. But when I broke mine, I thought about it a lot—how to make it comfortable, how far I could walk before its complaining became unbearable, what areas I could negotiate with the crutches it required. And because I had this broken toe while playing the tourist in Washington, D.C., it even affected my ability to enjoy all the interesting and beautiful sights around me.
In The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, Timothy Keller says that egos are like toes. If they’re healthy, you don’t have to think about them. On the other hand, if you’re always thinking about your ego, that’s because it’s sick.
A sick ego asks questions like: What do people think of me? What do I think of me? How can I become famous/important/powerful? Have I proved my worth as a person yet? In other words, the sick ego has you constantly occupying the defendant’s chair in a courtroom, awaiting the next verdict. (Great! My verdict was “good person” last week … but am I still worthy of that judgment today?) It doesn’t matter how much you feed, pet, and praise a sick ego, it always wants more. (I have a dog like that.) More
Della Loredo 