Pride

Merry Christmas.

I’ve been reflecting on a ton of life choices this holiday season, and something that has been lurking eerily behind every jagged edge is my pride. I’ve noticed before how structurally damaging it is in moments of sobriety for sure, but to lift the veil and army crawl under the foundation to see the remnants of what once were promising platforms to build on, that now can only be cut out and tossed or replaced, is ever disheartening.

Pride is acid. It devours and destroys. Corrosive and toxic, like the blood of a Xenomorph from Alien. When it touches anything, immediately it begins to eat away leaving empty and barren what used to be full. I feel bad knowing that I let my own pride remove opportunities that have since turned out to be gold mines. I just feel bad, you know?

Details are unnecessary, what’s important is the reflection of my pride. This acid needs a base to halt the destruction, and it’s my duty now to find that base, to do a favor for future Sean and those he interacts with. Something I’m beginning to recognize is the difference between values and pride.

Pride is an action in a lot of cases. It’s what you do when confronted with something you feel something about. It’s what you respond with. That can be tamed. Values are those somethings you feel something about, pillars resolute in a field fo dreams. Values are the bones to the meat, the structure built to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes.

Values get attacked, pride comes in to defend. Defense can be actioned through insecurity, which in turn belittles the idea of what pride could be: confidence in the importance of values. When responses laced with insecurity bubble to the surface of any challenge, that’s when the most corrosive chemical reactions occur, and the most unsurvivable toxins are released.

However, when confidence in values precedes any sort of reaction, humility blooms at the first strike of infliction. When one has explored the density of personal values, and has followed those roots to their source, confidence is the natural result rather than the manufactured armor we routinely strap on in the form of pride.

So what do I do? What am I actually wading through?

A few words I can think of that I’d like to embody moving forward: meekness, resolution, humility, boldness, honesty, wonder, tact. I want to disagree well, and agree even better. I want to feed those things in me that produce a sense of purpose and wonder, and starve those desires that beg a personal building up. I want to play a longer game than I do now, but also provide enough personal respite to dwell in as the world spins faster into devastation, but more than just an introversion I would like to seek those who might feel the same heat from that burning fire I draw into. I think that might be what compassion is - embodying your faith and enjoying someone else’s presence as is (with the obvious boundaries of course).

At the end of the day something I’ve been telling myself is this: Art matters more than what your pastor says on Sunday. There’s a conversation happening through the discovery of art, and an invitation to wonder that many couldn’t discern simply because they either don’t know, don’t care, or some combination of the two. Though it’s not yours to make the horse drink the water, lead constantly to the stream you have found so refreshing. To those who don’t agree or submit to the same outlook as you, perform your duty as regards the relationship with care and compassion as you have no idea where they might be tomorrow from which your response today will grow through. And to those you see the spark glisten like yours, fan that flame. The fire will grow with tending, but it’s not your fire anyways. Just keep it warm for the both of you.

I’m not going to save the world from anything, and my pride has been my confidant proclaiming some notion that it is my ability and duty to do so. Silly of me to think I have any sort of power of the like.