Pride: a man's Kryptonite!

One of the things that causes us the most grief is one's overwhelming and distorted sense of pride. Pride is one of the most toxic things that a person can keep and, unless it is reversed, is a sure cause of spiritual death.

I'm not talking about being glad for another person's accomplishments or being happy for someone for their blessings. I'm not even referring to being "proud" of your own record which may reflect that you've done your best. For those deeds, accolades and applause are due you in every respect.

I'm speaking of the sense of entitlement that places you above everyone and everything in your worldview. The Pride that causes one to be self-centered, or malicious, or even malevolent in the directing extreme attention to themselves. The Pride that causes one to force people to recognize them beyond whatever another may have accomplished no matter how much greater their accomplishments are in relation to yours. The Pride that insists that YOU are all that matters and that announces to the world that "its all about me now."

Pride is a disease that has no cure available from the outside. I have dubbed it the e coli of personality disorders. It truly does eat away at your heart slowly, surely, completely as well as makes you blind to all that is outside of the blinders that you've placed upon your head.

Pride is the evil that poisons the relationship well...that doesn't allow there to ever be an "us;" only a "me" that must be satisfied.

With Pride, there is no such thing as humility unless it is defined as "look at what 'I' did for you and this is how you repay me?" With Pride, you find yourself as Khan in Star Trek that says that you would rather "rule in Hell than serve in Heaven." With this sense of Pride, your life partner is only a convenient appendage who is there to serve at your whim.

Pride is narcissism run amok!! The Old Spice commercials say it all: "Look at me; look at your man; now look at me." Narcissism via Pride makes you go into debt and make you a slave to the people who own your promissory note but you can't see that because you have puffed yourself up through the external trappings that accumulating "things" serving as a costume to your foolishness.

Prideful people are the ones who demand that "you cannot judge me!" Isn't it cute that the ones saying this are the ones who KNOW they're guilty of being too proud in a negative way but just don't want to face the jury?

With some Men, it is the sense that you do not owe anyone a view of your inner self, not even yourself. It is your Pride that doesn't allow you to go to the Doctor to check up on things that may be killing you such as high blood pressure, cholesterol, or that dreaded exam to check for an enlarged prostate.

With some Men, it is the condition that prohibits you from ever saying that we are wrong; only misinformed and made a decision based on this misinformation. With Men, it is the inability to "lose" gracefully even if it means that you "win" in the end. Being competitive beings, we just say "it is what it is."

Well, why does it have to be that way?

Who has given us this horribly bad advice that we are to be stoic with our emotions to the point that we starve the women in our lives of the nurturing that they must have? Why can't we acknowledge their position in our world that has PROVED that we can't do without them?

Sadly, Men suffer from this in a unique and particularly damaging way. Women do as well but at least women will listen to someone who is telling them what their sense of Pride is doing to them and will take the time to correct it.

Most Men cannot and will not do this and I submit that it is strictly due to extravagant self pride.

What should/can we do about it?

• First, admit that you are not all that! There is enough evidence to prove that point if you will only listen.
• Second, repent of this by confessing your arrogance to those to whom you have visited this plague! Let them know that you were "not yourself" or at least not who you should be at the time. When you apologize, be sure to beg for forgiveness!
• Third, live a life of atonement. Humble yourself before all and elevate them above you. This is the hardest part because it asks you to do something contrary to your nature. But, that's the idea! You can't keep living this way because to do so sentences you to a life of solitary confinement bereft of human interaction because you've driven everyone away.
  

Fortunately, the cure to this disease is within one's own grasp. Simply look in a mirror and ask how you would feel if you were treated this way or contrast yourself with someone who is MORE proud than you are and you will see yourself from the outside in in a new and revealing way.

A life made bankrupt through Pride creates future trapdoors with only bottomless pits beneath them. As Faust found out, you can have the world but at the cost of your soul.

Eternity is a very long time to be alone...and the wost part of a prison sentence is solitary confinement, yes?

is it truly worth it?