"Proud people breed sorrow for themselves."
- emily bronte -
wuthering heights
I have generally thought myself to be a rather grounded person. Having once been a pretty dreamy girl, allowing my thoughts and actions to be dictated by whim and romance and laughter, I feel like I've arrived at a satisfactorily balanced approach, combining spontaneous positivity with an unshakable grip on reality. I think that's why I've been so self-reflective over the last few months-- trying not to let the "harsh realities" of my world blind me from the simple (and grand!) pleasures of life, always conscious of arguing dualities.
I've been unemployed-- but I don't have a job I hate.
My cats are wonderful and hilarious-- but that won't pay the bills.
Money is tight-- but I have so many clothes I never wear, things I never use, and extra pounds around my waist from abundance.
There is never one way to look at life. My feeling has been that it must always be observed through both eyes, that focus together to form clarity, unity, and harmony within myself. The worst and best of all things must be balanced, and anyone who ignores that balance is enormously proud of themselves.
My earlier years, with so much emphasis placed on shopping, texting, staying out late, flirting and skirting by in school, are a source of embarrassment to me. I look at myself and see a prideful girl-- one who knew it all (or consciously pretended to know it all) and thought I was better off for it. I pretended that I couldn't see then the consequences of my actions. Of course it was pretense because I could vocally acknowledge the results of my behavior at the time, but took my sweet time in changing my tune because I knew better. I was young, I was in college, I deserved that play time.
Prideful.
And my pride dictated the unhappiness that resulted from the constantly overdrawn bank account, the addition to my phone and computer, the lack of attention to my health and safety, the brash and loud personality, the sub-par report cards.
I'm grateful for the people who tried to tell me so at the time.
But then I became a you-so teller.
It's interesting to flip-flop in your life to such extremes because then you're mantled with this overwhelming sense of experience. You learn to care more. You learn to care too much. I looked around and saw all these other whimsical life players with their hopes and dreams and laughter and general disregard for Real Life or even just a steady job-- moreover, I saw for the first time their sorrows.
I could see how flirting shamelessly can make you seem desperate and sad, not darling and attractive. I could see how constant shopping at specific stores doesn't make you more awesome, especially without any regard for where the money is coming to pay for it all. I could see how being liberal, loud, out-spoken doesn't make a person carefree, but bound to the constraints of their liberality. I could see how our own prideful choices, made with a laugh in the face of humble reason, makes us sad and filled with regret.
Then, seeing how I was braizenly swinging on this pendulum between acknowledged lack of experience (I'm so young! I'm still learning too! I can be a grown up and still have fun!) and simultaneous grown-up-edness, I tried to wipe my hands of it all. Fine-- make your choices, no matter how destructive. You know your own life better than I do. It's not up to me to make you happy. I can't tell you how to be happy if you're convinced, and are so vocal about the fact that, you have to live it in order to learn it.
I seek to be teachable. I seek to learn from mistakes. I seek to be open to experience. I seek to be an example of hard work and integrity. I seek to be free from the bonds of pride.
Anyone who professes to seek improvement but refuses to step out of the vicious cycle of poor choices due to extreme, absurd self-assuredness-- is a fool.
Isn't that the most terrible thing? It sounds like the most terrible thing, when I put it that way. I paused before I wrote it, and then deleted and rewrote it, and then deleted and rewrote it all again, trying to think of another, kinder way to express my feelings. But I can't.
In my deepest, most immediate heart, I believe it.
Foolish people acknowledge what's wrong in their lives and continue to waste day after day after day in doing nothing but talking about it. Foolish people LOVE to talk about it.
And yet, there's this terrible double-side to pridefulness in being proud of our lack of pride.
All the attempts at humility and learning and openness and integrity is sullied with a hard edge that makes me just as sad as the silliness and overspending and irresponsibility.
I am proud of how un-prideful I am.
And you know, doesn't that breed just as many problems? Aren't I just as much caught up in the whirlwind of foolishness by caring how foolish others are? Doesn't that equally make me a fool?
So I'm trying this new thing: I'm trying very hard to forget my pride (and all the feelings and emotions and ego wrapped up in it) by losing sight of others' pride. I'm detangling myself from the cycle of proud sorrow since misery does love company and letting go.
It means I'm letting go of people, too-- and that's a sorrow in its own right.
I seek to be teachable. I seek to learn from my own mistakes. I seek to be open to my own experience. I seek to be an example of hard work and integrity for myself. I seek to be free from the bonds of my pride.
I guess that's all I can do.
