Thinking Against Oneself

We often imagine that our personality is the result of our own choices. That is an illusion. In truth, it was built without us — long before we had any awareness of ourselves. We are born somewhere, within a culture, a religion, a language, a skin color, a social class, a family. We inherit their wounds, their hopes, their limits. We are formed, molded, conditioned. We are, for the most part, the product of geographical and biological chance.

What we call “the self”, or more poetically the ego, is an accidental construction. Each memory, each fear, each success, each humiliation becomes a brick in our inner building. And like any building, it has its load-bearing walls — our values, our convictions — but also its cracks, its shadows, its decorative surfaces meant to hide fragilities.

Reducing the Ego’s Footprint

To live in peace, the goal is not to demolish this construction, but to reduce its footprint, to borrow a term from architecture. That means: lightening it, simplifying it, making it more flexible. Identifying its weaknesses: the beliefs that trap us, the automatic judgments inherited from our parents or our environment, the childhood fears that still dictate our adult reactions. Eliminating redundancies: the endless justifications we use to protect our image. Removing rigidities: those certainties that block growth.Dusting off the dark corners: the repressed zones we avoid out of fear. Scraping off the shiny facades: the masks that try to convince the world — and ourselves — that everything is fine.

To lighten the ego is to become available to life again —to allow reality to enter without being distorted by our filters.

Thinking Against Oneself

But lightening is not enough. This fragile balance must be maintained. And for that, it is sometimes necessary to think against oneself.

Thinking against oneself means accepting contradiction. It means questioning our own reactions, our automatisms, our anger, our enthusiasms. It means daring to say: “What if I’m wrong?” I is an act of lucidity and courage.

In a couple

Thinking against oneself means, for instance, giving up the need to be right. It means listening before responding. It means recognizing that we project onto the other our childhood wounds — the need for recognition, the fear of abandonment, the need for control. It means telling oneself: “Maybe I’m not suffering from what the other does, but from what I interpret.”

At work

It means questioning your posture: do I need to be right, or to be useful? Am I seeking to shine, or to contribute? Is my rigidity just disguised fear — fear of judgment, fear of failure, fear of losing control? Thinking against oneself sometimes means realizing that you are your own obstacle.

I

n the family

It means accepting that our parents did the best they could, that our children do not owe us their happiness, that our roles are temporary and shifting. It means admitting that some wounds are transmitted — but it is our responsibility to break the chain.

In politics

It means having the courage to listen to what we do not want to hear. It means acknowledging that our convictions come from context, environment, personal history — not from universal truth. It means understanding that every ideology rests on a certain chosen blindness.

The Art of Lightening

Thinking against oneself is not self-punishment. It is a work of inner uncluttering: removing what weighs us down to make room for clarity and freedom. It is accepting to remain a work in progress, without seeking to complete the house. For happiness, in the end, is not about living in a perfect building, but in a spacious, flexible, living interior, where we can welcome change without fear.