The Ego’s Boomerang

Have you ever realized you’ve been asking yourself the wrong question?

The question I had been asking myself for years—in counseling, in relationships, in conflict, in growth, in life—was always some version of: What is my role in this?

This question has guided me. It sounded thoughtful, accountable, mature. My process seemed solid—journaling, therapy, meditation, music, honest conversations—all met with whatever degree of awareness, openness, skill, and effort I could muster. Reliable, yes. But not always valid (shout out to stats class). Despite the awareness and effort, I kept ending up in the same place. Nothing was changing—or at least, not at the rate or in the way I wanted. I would repeat the process, uncover something new, feel reinvigorated for a while, and then find myself right back at the beginning.

I call it the boomerang effect. You throw out a question, hoping it will open something new, and it circles right back. The answers feel safe, familiar, predictable. You might feel a little wiser, but not transformed. The question can feel productive because it puts you in motion—but it’s the motion of return. The return to self. You’ve thrown something meant to open you, only to have it come back and confirm what you already know (or don’t know). That’s the sign you might be using a trusted but outdated tool, or asking a question that once served you but no longer illuminates what it used to. 

I know the pattern well. It shows up in many forms of the same question: What could be wrong? How do I show up more fully? What’s wrong with me? What am I missing? Why do I keep ending up here?

After a while, the pattern itself became the message. The questions had run their course—they could only echo back what I already believed. And then, after countless attempts, life presents a different kind of question. One that doesn’t arrive with an answer, but a shift. Perhaps it’s a perspective often overshadowed by the endless scroll of your mind, and you were finally still (or maybe just fed up) enough to notice it. That’s when the realization hits: all your inputs were reliable, but they were baked into the wrong question. The question itself had become limited in the truth or the change it could bring forth. The consistent feedback, the familiar return, and the quiet echo were the answer you sought but were unwilling to recognize. 

Sometimes the reason is simple: you’ve been examining everything except the foundation of the question itself. You trusted your process but never revisited the prompt—perhaps because it felt too fundamental, too close to a core belief to challenge. That recognition can be jarring.

But insight rarely arrives as revelation, even if it feels that way; it’s more often the harvest of long cultivation. Every question you’ve asked, even the ones that looped endlessly, was part of the soil that allowed this one to grow.

It reminded me of Laozi’s teaching in the Tao Te Ching: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” But teachers don’t only arrive in monastic robes or classrooms, or in The Karate Kid. They show up as friends, flowers, mirrors, moments, mistakes. They can be a question reflected back to you, or even the boomerang itself, circling what you’ve actually been chasing. Each one offers insight in its own form, patiently waiting for the moment you’re ready to recognize the reality of what is.

So, back to my question… understanding my individual role in relationships and in the world. It’s a healthy, reflective question, one that seems aimed at growth and impact: how can I be more helpful, more compassionate, more effective? But I came to see how it quietly centered everything on me: my role, my effort, my image, my growth. My, my, my. Me, me, me. I was the protagonist of every story, the sun around which everything orbited. I always had a role, always in the captain’s chair. That question, and the assumption behind it, kept me (the ego) safe but small.

Because maybe I’m not the main character at all (*ego gasps*). Perhaps the “I” is part of the problem, and I’m only experiencing the world from a limited view no matter how open I consider myself to be. Maybe “me,” whatever that even means, is just a temporary expression of something much larger, and I’m too close to see where I fit within it. My body, mind, and soul aren’t the story; they’re the ink that writes it. The paper it’s written on. The light that illuminates the words.

When I soften… when I relieve myself of being the doer… I feel expanded, and it creates space for something more whole and alive to move through the body, mind, and heart. Sometimes that’s comforting, sometimes it’s terrifying. For me, it shows up in small ways—a client’s silence, a friend’s laughter, a sudden gust of wind. And in larger ones—witnessing someone’s pain, arguing with a loved one, learning about the extinction of a species. These moments remind me I’m part of something that doesn’t need me to steer. The invitation for all of us is to slow down enough to sense what’s really happening, to respond with care instead of trying to manage the moment through fictitious control fueled by your self-absorbed ego. 

Bearing witness to these moments—and the presence they require—asks me to bridge multiple perspectives: the one that sees the forest, the one that sees the trees, and the one that senses the invisible patterns, quiet architecture holding them together.

It can be a lot to hold or accept, yet it’s a relief not to be the protagonist. To stop being the gravitational pull that everything happens to and circles around. To glimpse myself on multiple scales and trust I’ll simply become whatever the moment calls for… a listener, a witness, a vessel, a responsive participant in the unfolding. And maybe that’s enough (*ego shudders*). 

A boomerang question isn’t wrong; it’s just loyal to the ego. It keeps bringing you back to where you already are, until you’re ready to stop throwing it—until you realize you don’t need to find something new, only to finally see what’s been here the whole time.

So, the questions we ask ourselves matter. Even with pure intentions, we have to question their validity. Reliable doesn’t always mean valid, and valid doesn’t always mean reliable. Some questions serve for a season; growth sometimes means updating the inquiry. But if we stay curious, keep listening, and peek behind the curtain of our perceived experience, our teachers reveal themselves—in people, in nature, or in the quiet echo of our own questions—as if they’d been right under our noses the whole time.

My takeaway from this? When in doubt, take the “I” out of it—whatever it is. What remains might be something bigger, truer, initially uncomfortable, and breathtakingly beautiful, a kind of homecoming. One where the ego isn’t in the captain’s chair, but a guest at the dinner table. And maybe that’s the point. 

Be brave. Be curious. Be vulnerable. Be ready for the house of cards to fall. Sometimes we need to put down the boomerang and pick up something new—to find a question that doesn’t return, but pierces straight through and changes everything.

And as the Tao Te Ching reminds us in the second half of the teaching:

“When the student is truly ready… the teacher will disappear.”