When to take pride in yourself and when to calm it down
Pride. We all have it. It is the stuff that gets stuck between the the teeth of our life when we cannot admit something. Pride helps us make decisions, throws us down the wrong path and can sometimes even cause strife among our closest friends. As a fellow prideful human, I am here to talk about the ups and downs of pride.
Pride as a word has its roots in the old english word “pryde,” meaning an excess of self-esteem. Fabulous. Now do not get me wrong; taking pride in something is never a bad thing. Knowing your strengths is what will always end up getting you ahead. The problem lies in where our sensible pride ends and our pig-headed assumptions begin.
I think pride leads to a lot of discussion. After all, who does not love talking about their own thoughts? But without pride backing you up, your words fall flat, unconvincing. I have pride in my opinions, and I think because of that I learn far more than if I were to agree with everyone. With pride comes disagreements, and with disagreements comes a better, more well-rounded view. If you can see where other people are coming from but still hold your ground, you have learned something not only about them but also about yourself.
The negatives of pride tend to be quite obvious. I mean, it almost always ends up being someone’s hubris — or pride — that ends up being that someone’s fatal flaw. The tale is as old as storytelling itself, dating all the way back to ancient Greece with the original tragedies. Beyond that, in modern literature even Harry Potter was almost killed however many times because of his pride. There is also a chance that one day you will stand too firmly for something, and when pride takes over, there is a chance someone will get hurt.
All of this being said, I think Concordia has an abundance of people who take pride in their work. Not only do we have professors who love their jobs and work very hard to be ambitious in their fields, we as students work hard as a school to do work that leaves our peers in the dust. We as individuals contribute to a bigger idea of what Concordia is. Pride in our school is an epic part of that. However, there seems to be a disconnect.
I think this disconnect is not just Concordia, though. There is such a gap in the way things happen. Students go to college, major in something and receive this piece of paper after four years. We take pride in the fact we created this knowledge within ourselves only to find out we maybe know a tenth of anything. Is this education a fatal flaw? Are we fighting with pride for the education system by being here?
I think I will always be proud of what I learned here, and I will never waver in my love of Concordia. I do not, however, want pride to be my fatal flaw in learning, I do not want to think I have come too far and I do not want that for anyone else. Learning is one of the best gifts you can have. Being bored is never an option when you can go so far inside your own head that the world is infinite. If you want to be prideful of anything, be prideful of that.
