Oh, that ego

Gosh. This really describes our basic predicament very well indeed:

The ego, as a collection of our past experiences, is continually offering miserable lines of thought. It’s as if there were a stream with little fish swimming by, and when we hook one of them there is a judgment. The ego is constantly judging everybody and everything. It has its constant little chit chat about things that can happen in the future, things about the past, too, and these are the little fish that swim by. And what we learn to do—this is why it takes work—is to not reach out and grab a fish.

-- Hugh Prather