“I wonder why authenticity is so challenging for me. I suppose it links back to simply admitting who I am and letting go of the image or the desire to be anything other than this.”

ohh and i was doing a video for gbd…
and i my friend was filming me.
I found myself shaking, I never do that on camera or stage… usually my nervous energy balances itself out or i get lost in my character, but today I had to be myself.
I was also just ‘winging’ the video.
Its so weird how I can feel completely comfortable playing someone else, but when it comes to having to be in my own skin once again, i shake and tremble.
I’m still wondering why that is?
is it because I have to, in a way, face myself, confront myself and my being?
Am I afraid of defining myself?

jendi:
Nope…
just makes you challenging?
I ask too many questions, but most of my answers lead to more questions and so on… so you arent alone :-p

I still wonder.. at what point will my mind crash and burn from all these opinoins, debating and questions?

Amazingly enough, its still in contact
haha

Thats a possiblity, but is our freewill really at stake as a whole? or just an aspect? Free speech much?
are we at a loss when we cannot answer questions? therefore we make up for that loss by asking our own?
could we?

Hhhmmm yeah good points! Sometimes I’m happy to just say yip sweet as I don’t need an answer it just us how it is
And then…..

The very next day I’m questioning and analysising absolutely everything, so maybe some days I’m an egotistical monster and others I’m a shy 6 year old hidding behind my mum’s skirt? Perhaps our ego is linked to our emotions?

I also think ego is a direct effect of your outside environment.
Which does all lead back to emotion in one way or another.
Are we praised? Are we beaten?

Mind you…. im taking personality and reaction factors out
haha

“Ego has a voracious appetite, the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.” Nathaniel Bronner Jr.

Ego, latin for “I”. Also a term used by Freud to label part of the human personality. According to Freud, the ego is the strongest part of the personality in a healthy person, so by that theory, a world without ego would be a world where man was in constant conflict between his base impulse and moral compass.

I just started here (2nd post) so I’m still trying to get my bearings as to what is most useful. Allison, you are having very personal experiences and you are then trying to turn those into universal questions. I would rather address your personal issues rather than deal with generalities. But for now I will try to do both. As to the personal, your account brings up other questions about your experience. I assume that the public screening wasn’t the first time you saw the finished film and you were pleased with it then, so what was different about seeing it with an audience? You said that the film was great, so which aspects of it were you worried about? Was it just your performance for which you were concerned about authenticity? Even though Smallville isn’t close to cinema verite, for the characters to endure over time there has had to be an authenticty, a believability to them. You’ve certainly achieved that with Chloe, so what’s different for you about Alice and Huck? Is it the level of creative involvment? Is Smallville less threatening because you only have to act? To really speak to your experience I think needs more information, or rather more of your feelings. As to the larger question of ego, I think that we need a more common or shared understanding of what ego IS. Do we think of ego as related to self-esteem, personal power, dignity, courage, etc.? Or do we define ego as being overly self-centered? Do children need ego to develop self-awareness and personal power, to help them move from the family collective into self-autonomy? When we reach adulthood is it then time to let go of ego? To answer these we have to come to some common understanding of what ego is. If we see the universe and Creation as a unified Whole and we see the Divine as being ALL of that, then ego is simply the experienced sense of being separate from the rest of Creation and the Divine. But if Creation is Whole and unbroken then that can’t be true. Christians tend to believe that there WAS Wholeness but that somehow that got broken. But if you look closely at that it doesn’t really make sense. The Truth MUST remain Whole or it ceases to be Truth. So even though we experience multiplicity, all beings must actually be ONE. Experiencing that Oneness is Love. So experiencing separateness or fragmentation must be fear. If there is simply One then there must be One Will, not many, as is our experience. Love is just the experience of Wholeness. Fear can only arise if there is the experience of an “other”, because then there can be a will that can be in opposition to our own. This may sound like a denial of our ability to create our own personal experience, but paradoxically it isn’t. But that discussion is too long for this format. We know that we need self-esteem but what is the “self” that we’re talking about. Self esteem has to come from truth, knowing who we really Are. If our being is seen as something contained in this fragile, small, limited body, then our self-esteem remains fragile, small and limited. In light of these considerations we need to re-evaluate things like competition.

Hey Allison,
I would have loved to have been at the screening of Alice&Huck. I’m dying to see this film.

I have to think on this Ego question.

Hi Allison. and everybody else. I’m new to this site and this will be my first comment on here. I’m also working on a picture for the current MackEvent that i will hopefully be submitting by Friday or Saturday when i get my camera back and I’m also going to be adding a few new drawings to my photobucket channel then to. I will post a link on here then so if any of you are interested you can go check it out then. OK back to the topic.

Ego.. I think a little bit of an ego is just a normal part of the human condition. One of the pros to having an ego is it helps us take a lot of pride in what we’ve accomplished but if you have to much ego and pride you can become a real ass.

Which is also one of the cons another cone to having an ego is the more praise we receive the larger our ego’s become and eventually we may start to believe the hype ourselves.

The real problem is trying to find the right balance somewhere between shy and egotistical which can sometimes be a real challenge.

Taking pride in all of our accomplishments is a great filling just so long as we don’t over do it. Another con to having an ego is when people start thinging they are somehow above everyone else.

If you truly believe that you are better then everyone else then theres nothing left for you to try and achieve and that would be a very boring life.

But if you continue to set new goals for yourself and always do your best to try and achieve them without always trying to be the best and living with the realization that no matter how good you think you are there is always going to be someone better.

Then you will have a great life.

Also keep in mind that a little humility in our lives is a very good thing whether it come’s from our friends, family or just someone we meet on our way to work. It helps keep us grounded so we can focus on the things in life that really matter.

and I’m glad to see that regardless of how famouse she has become Allison is still a very sweet normal and down to earth person.

PS Allison i love the new season of Smallville and i can’t wait to see the episode you’re going to direct congratulations. BTW I hope the sceening of Alice & Huck went well last night and i hope it will be in theaters soon. Keep up the awesome work!!!!

Michael L

I think sometimes ego gets confused with arrogance and is viewed in a negative light. There is a cocky chap who comes into the local pub and my buddy always asks if he can leave the door open as there’s not enough room for him and his ego. Sorry – I just wanted to put something light hearted into a philosophical debate.

I think ego can be dangerous in that if you have enough people telling you how great you are you go from being confident to being that person that everyone tries to avoid having a conversation with. I guess I feel it’s important to have people around you who can inflate or deflate said ego without losing a friendship.

Anyway lots of love to you all and your egos however big or small they be.

I also find it interesting that you kinda glossed over whether or not that the picture was well received by others.

It’s nice to know that, if there is a problem with your ego, you can fix it. Thus the expression “alter ego.”

A “pro” to having an ego, is that I still want my husband to find me “hot, which pushes me to run to stay slim. And the benefit is that I am healthier.

Maybe that’s the only pro?

I suppose this is another one of those definition problems, where context makes it plain but where we find ourselves spinning around when trying to find an agreed upon definition, simply because the definition depends upon context. I know how I would like to be, but I only succeed occasionally. I see Allison’s desire to be authentic as a challenging and very worthwhile goal, being authentic, being true to myself, my ego. That means accepting myself with all my weaknesses and moving forward, not censoring myself because I’m lacking in some area nor defending myself, simply working at bettering myself. I think that I’m exactly repeating what she said, only I’m using ego in a different context.

When I was just out of my teens, I decided to take a course called “Opera Workshop” and signed up for it. I knew nothing about it but thought it would be interesting. I’d done enough to be comfortable with singing in general. When I arrived the first night of the course, everyone was standing outside the classroom with sheet music, a number of them with accompanists. I had absolutely nothing to sing prepared. My palms left trails of moisture anywhere I placed them. My tongue and throat were dry, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to squeak out a “hello.” Forget singing. Upon my turn to enter the room, I told them I hadn’t realized that I was supposed to try out and had thought that it was just a course in which we would learn how to sing opera. I supposed I should withdraw from the course. The orchestra conductor, a man with perfect pitch and a German accent, said, “Well, we will have you sing the scales, then,” and I stood before him, croaking out the scales while watching his face. He sat there looking as stern as Beethoven, and when I went up and down different scale patterns, he would shake his head, “no,” at times. I knew I was going to be kicked out of the course, but I wasn’t. I went on to sing small roles in two operas. But why couldn’t I have been relaxed and authentic? When I enter a room, I would take Crocodile Dundee as a model if I could (somehow, that just popped into my mind) because the character never takes himself too seriously. Of course, maybe that’s just because he has a big knife.

And then, there’s a quote I read by Clint Eastwood: “Take your profession seriously; don’t take yourself seriously. You really only matter to a certain degree in the whole circus out there. If you take yourself seriously, you’re not going to be able to move forward. You’re going to be hampered by always wanting to look in the mirror and see if you have enough tuna oil on your hair or something like that.” I like that guy!

I know that I’ll always have a certain amount of fear of the unknown. That’s just a part of me, and I’ll accept it. Somehow, that makes it a little easier to head there.

Confidence is overrated. I’ve never had problems with people who lack confidence, but I have had problems with people who are confident. Confidence is often only a step away from arrogance, there’s a very fine line there. Most the people I know who are very confident, have a source of confidence: other people. People have made them confident by boosting their ego, and so forth. Because of this, they will always be self-centered, attention seekers. If they don’t have people feeding their ego giving them that confidence, or should people suddenly become tired of them and ignore them, they will be miserable, and become desperate to once again have that confidence.

Why do you think so many people who are loosing fame and popularlity, quickly look to other areas to rebuild and revive themselves, hoping to regain that fame. You know, like an actor or actress who finds their acting career sinking and suddenly decides to become a musician or something else. They need that attention they recieve from being famous, and they’ll try almost anything to keep hold of it.

Just my opinion anyway.

Really, over all, it’s not that we should think less of overselves, but that we should think of ourselves less.

xoxo,
S-C

Really glad to hear the screening of Alice and Huck went so well.Congratulations to the entire team , I can’t wait to see it and you a in a different type of role.

Ego well, we all have one that’s for sure, and agreed there are good and bad parts.

The good, it helps our self esteem, drives to achieve things, to keep standards in how we act, dress and behave.

The bad – makes us scared, stuborn, narrows our point of view and makes us self centered…it’s all me,,e,me.

Talking from personal experience, it has stopped me from trying to reconcile past friendships, stupid of course, but ego is part of being human I guess.

I love your simile. I am going to start saying “cool as a cucumber” more often.

Anyways, “ego” kind of a negative term. I word that is similar is reputation. You want to have a good reputation, you have to have self-esteem.

But when your image of yourself imposes on others and you’re constantly trying to feed off it (ie full of yourself) that’s when it all becomes wrong.

Don’t think too much of yourself; but don’t short change yourself either. Just be “cool as a cucumber.” See, I used it already!

“Actors amaze me. To me it seems utterly extraordinary that a person can inhabit a fictional persona, and do it naturally and convincingly.”

gotta love it

we have the 90210 film crew at our highschool….
and everyone doing the filming… is so annoying
haha even the actors :-/
we were there after school annoying the security guards (not on purpose) but because my friends were there for band practice and a group of us were just chatting outside where they were ‘patroling’

I had to actually look up the definition of ego so that I knew exactly what I would be commenting on. Basically its the “I”, the self of a person. It’s not good or bad, it just is, so nothing is wrong with ego…per se, but how society has attributed characteristics to it as if it was defining someone who was full of themselves. Balance is always the answer in life….feeling good about your accomplishments, feeling good about who you are in this world, nothing wrong with that, but then when it gets exaggerated to the point of thinking you are better than anyone else, then it is wrong.

What’s next?

What’s the point? Is there a point?

We have been dealing with large ideas and sweeping philosophies and many of them have proved circular … folding back on themselves. What happens when we have beaten these topics to death? Time for small talk?

So, what IS the point … not of the universe … but of this blog. Once this community is formed, is there a purpose for it? Political, social, economical …? Or does this just become … whatever it becomes?

Just curious.

To Susanna-Cole-

I know where you are getting at, believe me. However it is not always the case.

Allison Mack is one awesome confident woman. Would you tag her as arrogant?

I think a lack of confidence is ‘sad’, especially in oneself.

OOO anddd…
haha sorry i keep adding, but my mind is scattered:

confidence is self-assurance, a belief in oneself…it does not carry with it the prerequisite of desiring to triumph over others, like arrogance does

If anyone wants to go for it:

[22:24] I say being intellectual and smart are one in the same….and that most people considered smart are not

[22:25] smileytay5: so you think they are one in the same, but don’t require as much hardwork to be put out there… smart and intellectual can be achieved through life lessons opposed to just text books in a way… and that we consider people who can memorize and have no ability to reason smart?

thoughts?
i thought it was a fun conversation