Pride vs. Humility

I've got time, I've got energy as a result of a caffeine high/(overdose?), and I've got a topic that I have been passively pondering in the spare moments of my days. I've got the perfect music to encourage my thoughts, and the inspiration of having read the internet in its entirety. Shall I continue hyping this post? Naw, let’s get to it.

I am convinced, or at least have been convinced in the past and am attempting to remain convinced, that life is all about a struggle between pride and humility. That if we were to boil down the differences of humanity, the essences of what makes the good truly good, and the wicked seem wicked, the virtues of comparison would not be love and hate or good and evil but rather pride and humility. The difficulty of achieving humility makes it something beyond natural grasp. To achieve true humility requires enlightenment, self-reflection, empathy, social comprehension, love, compassion, the list goes on and on.

"Why these two things, Matthew?" you may find yourself asking. "Because, it's my blog", I'd reply.

I was sitting around thinking about the way we grow socially, the way we develop from egocentric beings concerned solely of our own interests into empathetic beings who have become a lot more capable of moving away from this former self as we develop to understand our place among others.

We learn the pitfalls of pride in a cognitive way that takes years, if not a lifetime to comprehend.

I know it is wrong for me to build myself up to some great degree, yet I feel a great sense of joy knowing I'm better than others. The struggle isn't to mask that sense of joy, the struggle is to overcome it. Not in the faux-polite mock-modesty way where I brush off your compliments as I'm eagerly awaiting your further flattery but in the way that I understand my position and willingly sink below it. To will myself into submission and service...to WANT the place among the downtrodden, not as a means of feeling thankful for what I have, but as a means of understanding what it really means to love as I love myself. As a means of understanding that my place in the first world isn't attached to my worth. As a means of understanding that I am NOTHING more than those around me, regardless of education, wealth, age, gender, or any other label society tells me to value.

And that's exactly it, isn't it? You wouldn't sell goods by allowing people to see themselves as equals. People don't consume when they're spiritually full. I could care less about the labels on my clothes, because the tattoos on those easily removed layers are less than permanent. When I'm living a life of humility, my soul is branded with a culture that transcends the capitalist dream. However, as I stated before, this is a lifelong struggle, with society drawing out this prideful existence, building up this notion of self-importance as a means to extract all the material goods I can amass.

I need those goods, don't I? I mean, without wealth, how will I be remembered? Without wealth, how will I know my place? Without these status symbols, what will represent the man I am to be?

Why do I need to be represented by anything but the man who I am? Why let a symbol stand in for the person I am? My existence is nothing more than a gift, and rather than hoard all which I have, and all who I am, storing my every experience in an effort to saturate life with experiences, why can't I just be? Is an acceptance of life as it is such a terrible endeavour? When I die important, will I die prepared for death, or simply remorseful that I'm to be parted from all which made me worthy?

Pride will prevent me from knowing the man I could be. Pride will part me from my potential. Pride will preoccupy my consciousness until I am prepared to abandon my place in society. Pride will bind my existence to the world I am to depart from, separating my soul from the one who calls me home. Pride is the choice to follow myself into the abyss.

Humility is the opportunity to discover the man I've always wanted to meet. Humility takes Christ from the throne and brings him to the heart which yearns for filling. Humility is a commitment to disappear without a loud goodbye, but a lasting whisper; sought not in the noise of a multifocussed life but the intentional quiet of one striving to hear sounds long since heard, but never to be forgotten.

I'll choose humility, but I'm as unsure as always if I'll ever abandon pride in that choice.