pride
by Masako Toyoda
I recently met someone who seems to me concerned about pride to an unnatural degree. Discussing every other (considered-by-most-to-be) serious topic, our conversations have been filled with jokes, wordplay, and laughter. Discussing pride last night, however, his tone changed dramatically. In his own personal experience he shared, moments wherein his pride is at jeopardy, his easygoing and well-natured stable character evaporates, and he loses control of his emotions and thoughts. He is extremely weary of the effects pride has on many people including himself, and it showed in the way he spoke of it.
At first I wondered if this weariness was a manifestation of his (I assume) extensive exposure to Russian literature (he’s Russian & well-read). But then upon his sharing more the phenomenology of his experience, I started to identify his behavior patterns as a near perfect match to behavior patterns I received from an old friend that I did not understand and by which I was baffled. His was a weariness—alien to me—product of differences in personal life experience, awareness and character. It was interesting to have explicitly described to me a chain of thoughts, feelings and events that I do not have first-hand experience with which to relate. This boy described pride to me as by far his biggest weakness, one which consumes him to the point where he behaves in ways he is not proud of. From such a well-mannered and wonderful person, this self-critique surprised me, and got me thinking.
I’d like to share one of many thoughts I realized: I have been less than considerate and understanding towards others in my life who (though I am unsure if I would diagnose them as proud, per se) have exhibited similar chains of thoughts, feelings and actions for which I could not understand the causality, their reasons why. I do not think I was in a position to understand them then, but I realize now that it was a complete failure in communication and lack of awareness on both our parts of the other’s perspective that led to our misconstruing each other’s internal states. The necessity has become very apparent: for communicating as openly and explicitly as possible and for asking and listening more closely to what the other’s experience is instead of conjecturing about what their experience might be.
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A quick but important thought today.
I am very grateful to have such reflective and thought-provoking people around me 🙂
