The Fragility of Pride
Pride is an impediment, psychological weakness, and emotional fragility. It’s rare that it surfaces in any truly beneficial way that wouldn’t be better interpreted through a less prideful lens.
Even when we are proud of our accomplishments, it would be better to be satisfied with the work we’ve done than to be proud of ourselves. Selves which couldn’t have done any such work, if things outside of our control, like where we were born and the genetics our parents either gifted or burdened us with, hadn’t led us to an accomplishment that, in a way, wasn’t really even ours. We can always be appreciative or grateful instead of prideful.
Pride stifles our ability to learn. Pride gets in the way of the humility necessary to remain open to alternative ways, ideas, and perspectives. It serves us most as a blinder; when we are proud of x, y, or z, we carry that story with us into moments of advice, closing us off to growth opportunities. When we think we know it all, we no longer go seeking. And when we have a sense of pride, we have something to offend.
We have painted a picture of ourselves, and the more attachment we have to it, or the more “real” we begin to believe that picture is, the less we want someone to come by and paint something else on it.
This is why nearly every spiritual tradition says something to negate it. Jesus' disciples were often fixated on what they might be proud of, asking, “who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And he immediately shot them down from the high horse they were attempting to mount, “unless you change and become like little children,” he said, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
The Tao offers similar advice. In the same way children are devoid of the many egoic, prideful layers we have accumulated for ourselves, the Tao explains why that gets in the way. “Shape clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; it is the holes which make it useful…Usefulness [comes] from what is not there.”
Even the stoics would tell us to “Receive without pride, let go without attachment.”
It might make you feel powerful, worthy, or “better” in the moment, but pride is like a beautiful, yet noxious flower. Most of us find it attractive, but it hurts us when we grab hold of it.
