I'm glad you asked: I've been waiting to put it into words for quite some time now.

We're all born selfish - just look at the children. Our ego tells us that we're perfect, impecable, that we can achieve anything and everything. It's grandiose in its views and has a very hard time adjusting itself to reality. Ego tells us that reality doesn't matter: what we think, believe and hope for does, which, as you can see, is clearly false when it comes to predicting anything.

We believe that we're going to do magnificently on stage despite it being our first time because our ego tells us that; and, very often, it's enough for us to go for - it certainly was, and still is, for me. What ego forgets to tell us is that we're actually stage-frightened because there are so many people before us, all at once, listening carefully to what we say, and that the experience will be very tough to deal with. Ego omits it to present our mind with a picture where we conquer the world, instead of a far more realistic picture of many bloody battles, in some of which we might very well die without warning, which would be too gruesome for the image of perfection we've spend years building up in our heads.

An insult is an attempt at this image's integrity: if we learn that we're imperfect, we will not feel whole again for quite some time - until we manage something that will tell us: "You're good at this!" or "You're great!" - and it isn't a pleasant feeling: as if a part of our soul has been torn away.

Most of the times, insults don't exist in reality: rare person will go about their business purposefully infringing upon others' self-image, mostly to empower their own weak image. You probably know those people: they aren't just angry once or twice a month - they're constantly searching for someone to hurt, because the pain they cause makes them feel more powerful. It's a fair mechanic from perspective of filling up one's juices, but in a society-abiding species like ours it doesn't work out great: there are reasons for why metaphorical meanings for "asshole" and "douchebag" exist.

Most insults, thus, exist in our heads: as we figure out what others are saying, we reconstruct the meaning through our mind using what we know (which is why we can't speak other languages so easily: we can't comprehend them). If we know (or believe, rather) that others might be insulting us - trying to damage our self-image - then we might very well latch upon the words that provide such a meaning. As we hear "You're not a good plumber", we figure that it doesn't reflect good on our image - it makes us look imperfect, in fact - so we get angry and lash out. The same happens when we hear others talking about us, though this time it's peppered by the fact that they had the sheer audacity of speaking insultive about us without our knowledge or consent.

We would all like to be perfect. If reality was no constraint, we would most likely be, without a worry about anything else: why, when we have all we could possibly want? This, again, speaks ill of our ego's rational part, for if we have everything, there's no reason to strive for more; if we're totally satisfied with our lives, there's no reason to get up and do something else. A whole society feeling this way is stagnant and is prone to die out, because there are many more subsystems in our heads that have to work for us to thrive.

As we grow older and older, we learn more and more of our limits: that we can't play piano as easily as we can drive a car, that we can't shoot straight without spending hundreds of hours of training which is unfeasable, that even if we can put two words together, we can't for the life of us write a story as good as that of classics. We realise more and more that we're imperfect, and we cope with it by doing more and more of the stuff that we're good at - a good strategy, no doubt. Still, for the clever creatures that we, it may not be the best solution, for we've already been able to come up with something more effective - if only they'd teach that in schools.

The best solution, it seems to me, is to accept our imperfection. Most of the people will never think about it because of how we make bad choices, as described in the post. It takes determination in learning about life and oneself to step into such conditions as to break our own bubble. For some, it's simply living long enough: as we live, we encounter enough different people and ideas to shift our perception of the world and others - and, in the end, of ourselves. For some, like myself, it's not enough: we, the inquisitive ones, research human mind consciously in order to understand it, and it more often than not leads to us figuring out the wisdoms some never encounter and some will encounter later in their lives.

If we accept our imperfection, insults lose their control over us. We already know that we aren't perfect in quite a few things - what's one more thing? From the perspective of the ego it's very unpleasant, but those who accept their imperfection don't listen to it because it rarely, if ever, says something useful. As we accept our impotence over the most of the world, we project this onto others unconsciously, because if we're not impecable, how can others be? They're humans as much as I am. Those of the simpler traits that I have they have, too.

Or, to shorten the long story, - we choose to be hurt because we never consider the possibility of ourselves and our egos being not as important as we're led by it to believe from the childhood where everything seemed under our control and a result of our actions. Inexperience is not the same as ignorance, for it can be easily disspelled by new knowledge.