SUPPOSE we step back, use our imagination, and see the ‘Ego, the Crowd and the Individual’ as ‘The Companions’ — intelligent characters that are part of a single living organism or energy field attached to us. Because we humans are born with the faculty of awareness, we desire to go further, and we recognise that understanding the dispositions of this particular group of ‘companions’ will help us through learning from them, about them, and most of all, how they want ‘Awareness’ to see them.

The fact is that we are already in dialogue with them because we began that journey with these ‘companions’ as babies, when we recognised ourselves in the mirror, made faces at the reflection, and began our innocent journey of higher, more complex awareness. We also awakened to the cautioning balance of the inner voice of ‘Principles’ that remains with us, either to deceive or define, either way, assertive enough to say no with a gesture to what the baby doesn’t like.

Our self-awareness has always been drawn to one or the other of these companions, and over time, we come to understand that each has an agenda and can easily take us to extremes if we surrender and follow heedlessly, deserting the balance of ‘Principles’ and its assuring tenets of trust.

One of the unique gifts that comes with self-awareness is the ability to question or reason through everything, most times privately, to feel the vibe and explore the vibe. But the companions have been around longer. They probably were the first to witness the cosmic cooling that was the cradle for all that is said to have been brought together as being ‘Created’ or, as argued, ‘Evolved’.

Recently, I listened attentively as a Stabroek Market Water Street vendor argued with others about parents’ guilt and responsibility for the paths children take. In fact, I paused for the moment as he asked his companions: “Ninety per cent of parents do try to give their children the best they can afford, and instead they turn out to be drug dealers, junkie, whore and dishonest without conscience, sometimes even against their own parents. Is wuh mek duh happen?”

Some of us have indeed witnessed those actions within our own families and among our relatives. I have, on more than one occasion, credited dominance by one or the other of the ‘Companions’ to painful domestic or public actions. Therefore, our very awareness is the best record to define ‘The Companions’.

Now here I go, using the human gift of symbolic language to create a mythical realm governed by the unique trinity of our discussion, beginning with ‘the Ego’. To enter this space of admiration and praise, all else are adoring subjects. An act of disagreement is a violation before the ‘inflated throne’ of the egotist. A questioning expression or restrained applause signals an enemy rather than an engagement of ideas or opinions. Even if you are unjustly dismissed, you ought to know your place.

But many frailties lie concealed beneath the egotist’s crown. We all have an ego — we must have one to pursue goals and envision success at the end of hard work. It is the balance of this inner self with ‘Principles’ that is important.

Next comes ‘The Crowd’. You live in a social environment with laws that say you must believe in this or that. To belong, to be at one with the street, the village or the nation, implies who is sacred without saying it, who is above the rules and beyond anyone’s agreement, and you live within it and again must seek balance. The rules of the crowd did not just happen. They have roots and origins rooted in past experiences and present recurring similarities.

But that is not all there is. A quiet voice whispers a path forward. There is the ‘Individual’ seeping into the pool of the ‘Crowd’ to offer interpretation, not to deny what is, but to understand and undo probable lapses of self-responsibility towards readjusting and correcting the origin of the roots, with a new and greater task that requires understanding how the ‘Origins’ were formed and created the roots of the doctrines of the ‘Crowd’.

The individual of change must ascend from the ‘Crowd’ to witness and identify the simple double standards, the positive attributes of the ‘Crowd’, for within the crowd there is the ‘Egotist’ and the deceiving ‘Individual’.

But the balanced individual who steps onto the stage must understand: “By your works shall a man be known.” Therefore, as we mould those who desire to learn, they must understand ‘The Companions’, especially in our world of social media influences and spellbinding idols that seek to replace the balance between extremes with a logic that was frowned upon only yesterday but is described today as, “Duh’s how it’s going now.”

The essence of change, however, lies with the age-old reality, the saving grace and the creed of ‘Principles’ that belong to the quiet voice whispering “sensibly” to redeem self by seeking to recognise what is fearsome, but similar, in the encroaching world we are aware of by being at the borders of the world we know.

There are, and will always be, double standards and the fake of the best you know, but with greater honesty and awareness, you can make a difference that stretches further, as a positive influence so badly needed.

Remember always that the exploring mind is a portal of awareness…