Pride has a bit of a bad rap, I think.
It’s inclusion as one of the 7 deadly sins seems excessive. I mean, murder doesn’t make the cut, but pride does? Taking satisfaction in something you’ve achieved is not only incredibly human – isn’t achieving something of which we can be proud one of the prime motivating forces within each of us? – I think it’s constructive. Achieving something that makes me proud puts me in a great mood and adds to my confidence to strive further still.
I concede that, like everything else we do, pride has its seemly limits, and it’s grating at best and infuriating at worst when you have to interact with someone who is full of himself. Using a parallel to sister-sin gluttony, I can eat one, two or even three Oreo cookies without harm to anyone while granting myself an enjoyment. If I eat 100 of them, however, I’m not going to enjoy it, and pity anyone who has to see me vomit them up or deal with the mess that makes.
I am conflicted about pride though. I am a father to two daughters, surprisingly different from one another, and yet each spawns in me a feeling best described as pride. They are both remarkable people: thoughtful, responsible, funny, capable, with only a shared talent for creating untidy spaces to mar their perfection. And I revel in all of it.
But I have rarely, if ever, told my children that I am proud of them. I worry that my pride in them actually diminishes them.
They are not my creations, so why should I feel so much satisfaction as they reveal their brilliance and wit and humanity or as they accomplish amazing feats of intellect, reason, creativity and generosity? Only half their genes come from me, and even in that I’ve just been the vessel from my own parents and grandparents and theirs too. While I’ve had a hand in raising my children, helping them through a variety of experiences, teaching them skills and knowledge and sharing my perspectives, what I’ve contributed to their development is nowhere near half of what they’ve absorbed. There’s no denying I’ve had some influence, but even if that influence is one of the most significant in their lives, it’s still responsible for just a fraction of the persons they’ve become. A village really does raise all children.
There is only one person who directly experiences the pleasures and pains, triumphs and humiliations and decides how she will absorb them into her personhood, who reads and observes and tries and adjusts and chooses what to believe and when to shed that belief in favor of something else more true. And it’s not me. So when I feel that swell of pride, I also feel that it’s fraudulent. Sharing their joy, reflecting their own pride to validate their feelings – those feel legitimate. But taking pride myself in their achievements? It may not be deadly, but it does feel wrong.
Kinda sinful, I guess.