In his celebrated novel Frannie and Zooey, author J. D. Salinger at one point has Franny complain about the meaninglessness of existence.  For her, it is the ego that underscores life's futility:  hers and everyone else's she meets.

     

     Ah, the ego:  we can't live with it, we can't live without it.  For some, including Sigmund Freud, the ego is the seat of all neuroses.  For others, say, Friedrich Nietzsche, it is the path to greatness:  to rise above the herd.  For a contemplative like John of the Cross, it is something to be erased so as to allow God to flourish more fully.

     Maybe all three are right.  Our ego is our drive and center as well as a source of stumbling and imperfection.  But we need it to be who we are.  We are creatures of ego.

     Yet it is in humility that our ego finds its truest home.  We revel in our achievements even as we acknowledge we are dependent on our cultural systems to accomplish them.  We rejoice in our spiritual insights and wisdom even as we recognize that apart from present transcendence we would be not be able to inhabit them.

     And we laud the fact of existence, the existence without which any of these, even the meaning of existence itself, would happen.

      Because we cannot possibly deem ourselves alone in a personal universe.