Your eyes are slowly getting used to the dark. The only light in the room is coming from under the door. A bright, white light of hope. As you make sense of the space, you notice how hungry you are…

“I could eat a horse” you think to yourself, standing up. Suddenly, you hear a sound. Glass dropped on the floor.

You approach the door and put your ear. There are people talking, and what seemed like a mumble before, now is clear. You overhear a conversation.

“BUT OBELISK IS THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE ME, RAY!” a familiar voice breaks off, as if he might lose it any second.

“The Obelisk?” Your mind starts to wander through the chain of associations. Statues, figures, ornaments…

“It’s not the only thing.” raspy male baritone answers. The voice you often hear in the movies. “We made a deal, remember? You promised to lead people. To make them see. And now you act as though you never did.”

The sound of a chair moving fills the silence.

“It’s unfair. I don’t want to preach to people.” now tired tenor says. “I’m useless here…”

He sighs and you feel that his hands are holding his face. Then, he continues:

“Ray, let me out… I promise I’ll find a guy who is going to replace me. I really do… I want to leave this place and I can’t take it anymore.”

“I’m sorry, March…”

The voice breaks off, as if waiting for you to finish a thought. “It’s March!” Your hand reaches for the handle, but something inside stops you. The voice steps up again.

“There’s nothi-“

“YES THERE IS!” March counterposes. “I HEARD THIS TALE MILLIONS OF TIMES! YOU ARE NEVER SORRY! NEVER!”

“Be careful with the volume. The guest is sleeping.” Cuts the baritone.

Your breath stops for a second. Heart drops. The silence feels like forever, but lasts merely as much.

“How long do I still have to do this?” March, now quiet, asks.

“12 more years.”

“Whatever. The guest will wake up soon, you should leave.”

“Goodbye March.” says Ray, voice fading out.

No answer follows, though.

You close your eyes once again. “What is going on? Where am I?” But there is no time to think about it. The thoughts crawl in and out of you, thousands of needles piercing through your skin, tightening the knot more and more with every breath. Your body writhes in pain. In the moments of pure agony, you notice a strange sensation. A hand…

It is cold. Someone (or something?) is holding your shoulder from behind…

Time stops. Hands stop shaking. In a sudden, fast motion you turn around.

There is no one there. And no more pain.

“It is my reminder” you think to yourself, turning back, stepping forward, and opening the door.

Ego?

A blank room lies before you. You make another step. The door closes and disappears behind you with a hit, as though someone rushed to kill the lights. You see a table in — what looks like — the middle of an infinite room.

There are two chairs, facing each other, and a candle, half burned. “This is strange,” you think, but then spot him. Sitting on one of the chairs, legs crossed, eyes foggy and hands looking like he held a burning log.

“It’s you,” he says in a particularly gnarly, serious tone. Then blinks twice.

His eyes become large and a wide smile glides across his face. “Welcome back! I am so glad to see you again!”

Then, right before you try to say something he continues:

“Since you are back, let me look into what we have planned for this time…” His hand stretches far wide, grabbing a drawer. Stacks of papers stretching endlessly, as he fingers through them. “Aha! Found it! Today, I am going to tell you about ego… That is a tough one but I am sure we will manage.”

You decide to let go of what you overheard standing behind a closed door, and just go with the flow.

“Ego?” you ask, confused.

“Yes, yes. Don’t worry! Just follow my lead… I need you to close your eyes. I’m going to count backwards from 10 to 1 and you’ll open them when I stop. Got it?”

“Yes?”

This is violence!

You open your eyes in disbelief…

Gigantic, pastel-white columns seem to reach the skies, Greek Gods buried in the walls of what seems like a theatre. It’s quiet, yet you feel something is happening.

“This is Julius Caesar.” I tell, sitting next to you on the wooden stairs. “I’m sorry if I were sudden. Now you’re going to witness the greatest act of revenge of le monde antique. The killing of Julius Caesar. There it goes…”

He walks slowly down the rows of seats, close to you. By the look of him, he hadn’t slept well that night.

You notice a person in a white robe stand up and approach Caesar from behind. “They asked questions like this before?” you think. But instead of asking something, he grabs Caesar’s toga and pulls. Your heartbeat skips.

Caesar turns around, holding on to his clothes, — This is violence! — he shouts. But there is no violence greater than death.

Ten people stand up, forming a circle around him.

One steps behind the throne, where irritated king goes to sit. In a moment the dagger falls on the king and—

Ka-ching! The photograph is taken.

Time stops. The expression on the conspirator’s face is full of anger, guilt and shame. Not the qualities you’d see in a person doing something right…

But I need to explain you something first, so it all makes sense, okay? Let’s do something movie-like for the sake of it, shall we?

Ahm… How did he end up here? Well, let me explain… Yeah, that works.

As per usual, a macchiato grande?

The blindness of the crown.

They often say: Heavy is the head that chose to wear the crown. And it is true. In fact, a whole empire can fall because of one man with grandiose plans, over-the-head ambitions and a deaf ear.

The crown, whether laurel or golden, can and often will make you deaf, if you do not check-up with yourself and others. We don’t see our own dismay. And in the great case of power, the crown blinds the holder. It instills paranoia, fear, and anxiety.

Those who cannot bear the weight often surrender to it, leaving themselves closed to the reality. They become addicted. They fall to the crown, drown in power or become unaware of people who raised them to it. But remember, the people who pushed you up will be the ones you’ll see falling down.

“The strongest poison ever known
Came from the Caesar’s Laurel Crown.”
William Blake

It’s time to really look down

Those who only look up will never see what is happening under or besides them. Similar to how Caesar has never seen conspiracy growing, because he was so caught up with his ambitions. There even is a saying of his: “Veni, vidi, vici” which means “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Caesar’s relations with his keys to power, in this case The Senate, became so tense he resented them. And even when someone on the street approached him handing a letter saying he is going to get killed that day, the bad night’s sleep, the Ides Of March curse. Nothing stopped him. The paranoia became so unbearable he couldn’t face the threat with the clarity it required. And he paid his price.

The spell that makes the strongest frown.

Caesar was no ordinary man. His undoubted intelligence led him to the heights of power and fame. But ego thrives on power and the superiority complex. So if you think you will stand a chance against it, remember that the man who conquered half of the known world at the time couldn’t.

Ego also leads to arrogance and self destruction. Fueled by it, we lose track of what we’re doing, saying, or becoming. Ego rots the holder from the inside. As we discussed earlier, it blinds and deafens.

Is it all over, though? Ego wins?

No.

Even after the darkest nights there is a dawn

There is a solution. I am no Dostoevsky, and I’m not going to leave you hanging for 200 pages.

Humility is the antidote of ego. It’s the inner peace of accepting the fact that you do not know much. “The more I learn the less I know,” as Socrates put it. It’s asking for an explanation instead of making yourself seem smarter than you actually are, respecting the people around you (especially the ones who are close to you), carefully listening to what people are really trying to say, not the words they use. It’s finding the truth in the debate, not trying to be right by any means. Not lying to yourself and others and a lot more.

So to cover up:

Listening carefully, speaking righteously, moving silently, and living honestly.

If only Caesar would have listened to people, hadn’t disregarded the senate and would not let ego rot from inside he would have remained a handler of power and a holder of the truth.

If only the thing that led Caesar was his mind and not his ego.

Where did we stop?

Oh, right… Wait a minute, I need to get into the character. Lean closer.

Closer.

A tiny bit more…

Sweet!

I’ll take a quick picture 😉

Ka-ching!

As the daggers fly, the killers smile, manically convicted in their idea of killing a tyrant. Blood spills, sweat drops, silence arises.

The dictator falls on the ground. His eyes catch a glimpse of the worst death a human being can possibly bear — the death of betrayal.

Brutus approaches him, holding a dagger, tears in his eyes. He gets on his knees, gasps and pushes the blade inside of the leader of Rome, Julius Caesar.

“And you, Brutus” Caesar says, betrayed by his own child and strangled by his ego.

See you quite soon.

“Heavy is the head that chose to wear the crown
To whom is given much is required now.”
Kendrick Lamar

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