Wee-woo wee-woo hot take alert!!!

Egos are not inherently bad. Please hear me out though! Our egos tell us when boundaries have been crossed, when we’ve been disrespected, and reminds us that we’re unique (conversations about individualism aside). Now, there is a trick to it. We can’t let our ego drive the bus. We can’t let our ego take over the conversation.

And the same goes for pride. Of course, as queer people, that word has lots of connotations and associations. We love Pride. Our therapists are always encouraging us to be proud of ourselves. Our survival, our stories, the identities we fight to protect and have respected demand we be proud of ourselves and our community. With Leo as a lion, we also have to think about a lion’s pride. The “pack” if you will. Find me a Leo who won’t fiercely protect their own, who doesn’t defend their pride.

Leo also talks about self expression. That’s kinda their whole deal. And you bet there’s pride in that too. We’re proud of certain features we show off, we may even wear pride flags and colors (the superhero cape style is a great example). We express how we’re feeling, how we want to be perceived, how we want to be represented in the world. And let’s not lie and say the compliments we receive from these expressions don’t boost our ego at least a little bit.

Pride has some great uses, and we need at least a little bit of ego to make that work. We gotta recognize our own worth and boundaries as well as the worth and boundaries of our friends and people we come across. We gotta protect our pride. Because Jesus fucking Christ it’s just about the last thing we have right now.

Everyone has pride, everyone has an ego (that boy who did shrooms once and says they experienced ego death? Baby that’s just finding empathy). They’re intrinsic to the human experience. And yeah, we all find ourselves in moments where our pride and ego are driving the bus, and we cause harm. That’s also part of the human experience. It’s just a chance for a course correction. Pride and ego serves you, and by recognizing in others what you see in yourself, they also serve our community.