Have you noticed that due to the times, or perhaps it’s the aging process, it is harder and harder to break the shell of the lesser self?

We want things the way we want them. We worked hard to get them that way, damnit. So why should we put up with anything less than ideal?

The lesser self is a needy bastard.

Let’s define our terms. The dictionary defines ‘lesser self’ as egotistical concerns and desires. Does that remind you of anyone?

That’s right, you. When you sat in your bedroom and binged on a whole bag of Twizzlers because your mother told you to clean your room. You were punishing her weren’t you? Take that mom! Let’s not talk about the fact that Mom, by this time, was having a good massage and lunch with a friend. You were going to eat until you got sick. That’ll show her.

Not.

Your lesser self is a closed circuit TV. It’s a feedback loop. It’s you, stuck in your shit and usually blaming it on everyone but yourself.

When the lesser self needs something it always looks outside itself for answers. Here are some telltale signs.

1) You use the strategy of the shopping mall instead of the strategy of your heart.

2) You start every sentence with, “Please oh please oh please God, if you do this one thing for me I’ll be forever grateful.”

3) You decide the answer to life is Twinkies.

4) You call your guru on Monday, your mother on Tues, your shrink on Wed., your zen meditation master on Thursday, and then say screw it and visit your bartender (or local pusher) on Friday and stay drunk (or high) the rest of the weekend.

5) You think you see the devil in everyone but yourself.

6) You run faster and faster to succeed and find yourself more and more lost.

7) You tell off someone you love because you know they’re right.

8) You elect Obama so you can hope for a better world, but you are still an asshole to the people around you.

9) You elect Trump so you can get a better job instead of sending out applications.

Your greater self on the other hand is simply the world’s biggest umbrella. You put it up and it is WAY bigger than you are. There is PLENTY of room under your umbrella for your family (even the ones you haven’t spoken to in awhile), your boss, your mechanic, the doctor’s assistant, half the town! It is an expansion of your life to its interconnectivity with the universe.

When your lesser self thinks “why is the world so selfish and cut up?” That is your most opportune moment to put your greater self to work. YOU are the missing link that will right it.

Which is why my greater self is working on a new screenplay.

The Value Games is set in a dystopian future and concerns a girl/woman played by Anne Hathaway who must win a competition to find value in everything. One of her main competitors is Katniss played by Jennifer Lawrence, who loses in the final round by telling Anne to go fuck herself when Anne catches her trying to shoot Zooey Deschanel with a barbed contract clause. Katniss wins the battle but loses the war when they sign Ivanka Trump for Hunger Games 6.

In The Value Games  world it takes your heart and humility to accomplish anything. Those with brains, ego and arrogance need not apply. And when they do, Anne tells them, one at a time, how to spell douchebag. Nicely though, because Anne wins by creating value, and most of them spell douchebag without the ‘e’.

Anne’s final battle is with Donald Trump who tests her patience and the dictum “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” She tries to find value there, desperate to create good, but all she finds is dollar bills; even when he strips to his jockeys, which he does for a dick-raising contest with Caitlin Jenner. The Don wins the battle by using rolled up real estate sales contracts secured with Tiffany stick pins to shoot spitballs through, but loses the war because his heart is a lump of gold plated snot.

The book ends with Anne whispering the secret of her beautiful heart to a green hobbit child who is about to go on the great journey of life without diapers, but we can’t hear what she says because we have to find out on our own.