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kimberlysteeleYou say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?
-Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone
Pride: I'm no stranger to it. I have had the weird experience of being the nerdiest of nerds and the hottie within the span of a few years. I was the ugly duckling that turned into a swan, and like many swans, I became arrogant and resentful of people in general because I perceived myself as being treated badly as a duckling.
The Ugly American Trope
Americans have a pride problem. We display pride where it doesn't belong. Many of us think it is OK to go to the store in pajamas and flip flops. Before the Coronapocalypse, some of us who had the money to travel abroad were known as obnoxious tourists: loud, badly dressed, ignorant, and proud. For a while there, we had an awful lot of chutzpah, spreading our Disney movies and greasy fast food to every corner on the globe along with wars nobody asked for. Nowadays we find ourselves shrinking back from Empire (I hope, anyways) and forced to take a raincheck. We aren't used to having to behave this modestly.
I can tell you from deep personal experience that pride is most often a function of insecurity. Take a proud Christian man I knew who grew up hard and poor on a farm, his life a series of bitter disappointments. He had two things: his God and his pride. He spoke with certainty that he was going to spend an eternity with his Father in Heaven, and because of this, he had a death fetish that included not one but two living funerals for himself. He held these two pre-funerals so everyone could recognize his achievements and celebrate his assured ascent to the pearly gates. Another proud Christian man I knew somehow attained a PhD while not being able to execute a grammatically-correct paragraph. Pride does not have a great deal in common with reality.The proud are always under threat, whether this is real or perceived. They lack a sense of humor if the fun is being poked at them. Anger is their constant companion. They confuse one type of achievement with another: Christian Man number one confused being given the short end of the stick in life with being holy, and Christian Man number two confused his ability to cheat the system into providing him with a degree with real intelligence. The proud are impossible to convince of their own vices/faults. If you told either of these guys what was going on in their own heads, they would curse you. If they were young, they might try and throttle you.
Pride and Pulchritude
When I was prouder, I thought myself smarter and better-looking than I actually was. At age twenty-one, at the acme of my beauty and when I cared a great deal about it, I thought I was a genius 10 when truth be told I was more like an 8 with a somewhat above average brain. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I'm confident for a select few (my husband at least seems to be fooled) I am an 11, off the charts, hubba hubba. For others, I am and always was a meh at best: too short, too odd, not enough, too much.This is meatworld. The Perfect 10 does not stay that way for long. At the apex of my physical attractiveness in my early twenties, it was all higher, tighter, cuter, and trimmer than it ever would be again. Today's TikTok cutie is tomorrow's ancient swamp hag. As I have said many times, if you don't let go of pretty by age forty, it will eat you alive. Plastic surgery will not help. Surgery renders the aged into freakish, B-version mockups of their former twenty-something selves, a turn of the head revealing a telltale scar or a dent in a cheek or nose. There's the creepiness of a face that is frozen and unable to move as if the entire thing was Novocained. The best case scenario -- looking a convincing 23 when you are actually 63 -- is bizarre and aberrant. At some point, and I would argue that point is a few years before menopause for women and the same approximate age for men, the wisest thing to do is to walk away from the competition, especially if one was a Perfect 10 such as Brigitte Bardot or Beyoncé.
Pride's Opposite: Pandering
The opposite of pride is pandering, groveling, kissing butt, sucking up. Ironically, there are plenty of proud people who pander. Hillary Clinton comes to mind with her hot sauce: there is no low too transparently degrading to which she would sink. Pandering is weakness, swinging to the opposite side instead of finding the happy medium between pride and its opposite. Pandering is often used as a bargaining chip, for instance the actress who steps into the sleazy producer's hotel room while angling for a movie deal isn't always naive to what is about to transpire. Pandering implies a compromise of one's dignity in order to gain an advantage. Of course pandering happens on the small level all the time: being nice to someone who is loathsome because you hope to gain a favor from them feels slimy. I've been there and done that and I'm trying not to do that anymore. Either I don't parlay with that person or I avoid them altogether: this is my goal.Pandering happens when the line in the sand gets erased: how low will you stoop to get the goods? What ideals will you discard to survive? Will you sleep with someone you find repulsive? Will you maim yourself? Will you eat garbage? As someone who remembers two past lives where I strongly believe whoever I was starved to death, I think it doesn't matter how low you go. Sometimes you don't survive no matter what you do, so you might as well go down with dignity.
Humility
Humility is the state of grace between the two extremes of pandering and pride. Humility is the admittance you don't have to be the best -- you don't even need to qualify as top tier. Humility is picking your battles rather than rushing headlong into them without thought. There are many friends in my past whom I should have accepted for themselves without being jealous of them or without having to be "better" than them. Going your own way does not mean that it has to be superior. To each their own. Humility means not having to turn every project into an empire. Humility allows failure and better yet allows us to laugh at it without cruelty or self-hatred. Humor puts ego in proportion. Humility draws a line in the sand and leaves one's fate in divine hands.
Understanding that I am of little importance and the Universe is happy to go on without me does not have to resolve in atheist nihilism. Instead, I can take what little influence I have and make the best out of every moment of every day. For I am a better person tomorrow than I was today, even if it is only by the slightest amount.
Threats
Date: 2021-01-13 09:14 pm (UTC)As a young person in America, I got first-hand experience of service industry jobs where you're not allowed to sit down for your entire shift, and your fifteen minute break never comes. By the time I graduated high school, I'd put myself in enough physical pain that I knew I had to get a "sit-down job" no matter what. That apparently meant becoming a liar.
What office/corporate jobs I've worked had me violating my own moral code on a weekly basis at least. I could sit down, but in exchange I had no honor, dignity or truth. Only the sociopathic got promoted. What's more, in the late 90s and early 2000s everyone I encountered was convinced everything was fine. I wish an angel had pulled me aside at age fifteen, popped me out of the Matrix for a second and confirmed my suspicions, "Yes, you're in hell. Now, what are you going to do?"
The threat isn't poverty. The threat is the ability to secure your own safety, and that is lorded over young women until they cannot see their inner truth, much less stand up for it. The threat is Fantine's fate from Les Miserables. For me, the rat race, whether in working class jobs or middle class jobs, was a degradation of my own character. I did anything to keep my job, whether that included lying or throwing someone under the bus or manipulating someone else. At the time I felt I had no choice.
I guess I'm technically poor now, but after getting married I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. I can sleep at night. I found once I had the chance to sleep and finally accept I'd never become Fantine, I could safely stop the survival manipulation and lies and regain some dignity. At least in my case, the constant Linked-In plastic projection was a desperate attempt to not wind up homeless and unable to secure my own safety. Maybe it's humility or just gratitude after becoming more economically secure, but I've long since stopped caring how other people judge me. Sorry- this became a long comment!
Re: Threats
Date: 2021-01-13 09:40 pm (UTC)In the end, it is ALWAYS a gratitude issue. I am "poor" when we compare the place I live and the work from home fund manager's four bedroom house in Naperville. I am not poor when you consider how much free time I have compared to him, or when you look at my quality of life. I am more resilient than the fund manager. My house may be tiny but it has a sizable garden. His does not. I can probably afford my house if I lose my job. He cannot. Gratitude paved the way for this: I am more grateful for less stuff and less stimulation. I grew up with money. I wasn't grateful like I am now. Gratitude is really, really important.
Re: Threats
Date: 2021-01-14 02:37 pm (UTC)Wow, that perfectly sums up my last job. Got out of there as soon as I could.
Re: Threats
Date: 2021-01-14 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-14 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-14 04:22 am (UTC)Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 12:42 am (UTC)I told my dad I was gonna give up anger for Lent and he laughed at me.
He was right, of course; I could not give up such a basic part of my humanity and my nature! What I did learn however is that anger is my default emotion when I’m unsure about whatever it is I’m dealing with. This has been a wonderfully empowering means to bring my shadow into the light and to grow spiritually. I “gave up” anger for lent for several years and have a much better understanding of myself. And I only need to keep that focus up for forty days. Even I can do that reasonably well!
I’ve “given up” pride in recent years and this has also been illuminating.
This year I’ve decided I’ll focus on envy. I’ve been noticing that little bit of ugliness interfering with my life.
I don’t practice any other rituals from my childhood Catholicism, but I have enjoyed this spiritual exercise quite a lot.
Annette
Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 04:20 am (UTC)For me, anger was the big one. I wrote many novels trying to work through my anger, which was always disproportionate to my circumstances. Writing helped, but what helped much more was Druidry and its constant banishing rituals and discursive meditation. My anger has to do with my past lives and the circumstances of my birth -- now I get that, and it has helped me digest my anger and use it constructively.
Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 04:26 am (UTC)I do it in my garden every morning and it’s lovely!
I’m still working out my pantheon, by the way.
Blessings!
Tonight the stars are out and the temperature is a balmy 47!
Annette
Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 08:39 pm (UTC)Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 09:48 pm (UTC)My friends Larry, another SoP practitioner, was telling me his neighbor in the other half of their duplex complained to Larry’s wife about seeing Larry do SoP in the mornings. He does it anyway.
That reminds me of the show “Bewitched” where Samantha and “Derwood’s” neighbor, Mrs Krabets(?) was always spying at Samantha’s house and complaining to her husband Abner about the witchy weirdness going on. The correct response is an eye roll, if Samantha gave the right example.
I’m not sure I would be bold enough to do my ritual outside if I felt seen by my neighbors, frankly.
Annette
Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 10:54 pm (UTC)Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-15 02:06 am (UTC)Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 10:09 pm (UTC)Annette
Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-14 10:55 pm (UTC)Re: Pride/envy
Date: 2021-01-17 12:46 am (UTC)Kudos to you for your "eye of the storm" calmness. Among JMG commentariat, I've read every kind of reactions to our mystical disciplines. Not long ago, I was perplexed enough to ask him about an odd sensation, something like a crown or a kippah over my head.
Edu
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 02:02 am (UTC)What did you find most helpful in learning humility down to your core, not just as lip service? Meditation? Prayer?
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 05:03 pm (UTC)There is a subset of pride known as vainglory. Most people have no idea what the word means, but it's important, and much of my younger life was crippled by it. Where pride is "I'm better than you", vainglory is "I live and die by your opinion of me". Weirdly, just having the concept explained to me was enough to banish it almost overnight.
I don't know if it's useful to you, but in Orthodoxy, the larger concept that helped me was this: You are made in the image of God. That part of you that reflects God, is your true self. Modern life teaches us that we are our thoughts: that everything going on inside my head is "me". And then it does us the further disservice of telling us we must be true to "ourselves" and that we must love "ourselves" exactly as we are! This is a disaster. We are NOT the sum of our thoughts. In fact, most of our thoughts aren't even ours-- they are things zipping by in the air. They come from the outside: from advertising, from other people, from our sources of entertainment and news, from non-material beings, from all sorts of things that are not "me". One thing that prayer and meditation can do for us is help us recognize which thoughts are really ours, and which ones are essentially foreign objects. When it comes to vainglory (aka "insecurity"), just having it framed in terms of 1)These thoughts are something from outside myself, 2) I don't have to throw out the welcome mat and invite them to dinner, and 3) Indulging them is a sin.
Or as Saint Paisios put it-- thoughts are like airplanes going by: I don't have to build an airport and let them land!
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-17 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 07:36 pm (UTC)I also used to do the "fake it 'til you make it" and frankly, it can be one of the absolute dumbest, worst strategies of all the choices available. New Thought has done a great deal of psychological damage to the average American, myself included, which is why I picked on Napoleon Hill in my last essay.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 07:58 pm (UTC)—Lady Cutekitten
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-19 03:24 am (UTC)https://thepostmillennial.com/homeless-man-dies-in-montreal-in-front-of-homeless-shelter-closed-due-to-covid/