Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer Simpson decided to eat a forbidden donut and ended up being force-fed in hell? Well, I discovered my own forbidden donut today: Being right. A few days ago, I wrote a piece on how self-assured I was? I was still that confident about my abilities. Today brought on a lesson that I could do better, but still be worse than who I could be in the future. And so, inspired by the spirit of all great sci-ifi, let’s time travel into the mind of a snot-nosed kid.

This is my own personal Voldemort: the smug bastard who decided that he knew everything, and that a little boy who he saved could lead to his own demise was his strongest opponent. The problem is that we want to conquer everything, and the second we think we have, something comes along in our periphery which needs conquering. I subsequently identified Bairfur-DeMort (killer of bears, get it?) – my arrogant alter-ego, my Joker, if you will. If you’ll forgive my rather hairy joke, I think the concept still stands. My jokes tend to be a close shave these days.

Bairfur, the prick he is, has some intriguing characteristics:

1. When found wrong, justify, cover all paragraphs and dominate every space of the paragraph he’s talking.
2. Ignore that he may be The Demon, The Bane of your Existence and possibly the biggest stumbling block to your success.
3. He strives to be your shadow, your darker side.
4. Thrives on certainty, and overlooks the obvious: The little you know is negligible in the scope of a universe so vast and imperceptible that you’ll never see a tenth of it. It may be because he prefers to wear sunglasses everywhere he goes.
5. He loves the idea of going to places you fear to go.
6. Being the archetypical demon he is, he probably has a bunch of success tips which you can tap into, but is often foiled by that meddling kid inside you.
7. He’s often smart, arrogant and charismatic.
8. Dresses better than the kid.
9. Experience is an easy way to draw upon the f-ups of our life past, and that being a dick is sometimes (or often) necessary.
10. Feels that excess is good all the time.

This presents a problem. As you may imagine, you may need some of his (or her, possibly, in your case) skills to do well. I guess the trick here is to maybe acknowledge he has some skills the kid inside can tap into. I particularly like the charisma and smarts. Maybe I like the sunglasses too.

So I’d say that if we knew when to listen to this prick, he might end up being useful, right? We might end up, say, having him in our employ, to help us deal with some of life’s situation where assertiveness may be needed. Or perhaps when doing a bad thing is better than a good thing, and when saying sorry may help us instead of not doing anything. Rats.

How then, could the kid inside come to make friends with this insidious villain? Let’s see.

1. Actually debate with Bairfur, and acknowledge that shaving and dressing better when the situation fits may make some friends the kid may never have made outside of being in his company.
2. Question whether the kid is right or not, and accept that the kid sees things on the ground better than the big-man.
3. Bairfur may actually start liking the snot-nose brat and find that some under-handed compliments may be in order.
4. Of course, when the kid decides to throw his toys out of the proverbial cot, Bairfur may have some tissues ready to deal with the shit that comes up and give a pointed lecture on being stupid, and that the kid may just need to accept life for the suffering as it is. (Wait, Bairfur sounds incredibly like our parents. Blah, this sucks.)
5. The kid may convince his arch-nemesis that being a bastard isn’t always the solution and that submission may yield a positive result (in context, of course. Nobody likes a submissive bitch – I’d suggest watching Howl’s Moving Castle for a good reference on this).
6. The kid may also benefit from pushing back to Bairfur, and by proxy, other bullies.
7. Bairfur may actually help the kid grow into something better than both Bairfur and The Kid. (He really does sound like a parent, sigh.)

Is it me or did I just unknowingly reference Jung’s Shadow? Hmmmm. That was quite the rabbit-hole. Thanks, Lewis and Alice. You really should watch Howl’s moving castle, though. It’s a great movie.