Powerful Pride

Pre-post note: This "alliteration title" gimmick is going to kill me.

As I was discussing with my good friend Name Omitted today, I believe that pride is a fundamental need of humanity. Despite its notoriety as a deadly sin, I think that pride can be healthy - albeit in small doses - and even necessary.

Pride is an immensely positive-feeling emotion. When we are proud of something, it is not immediately an unwarranted feeling. We can be proud of something we've done well, or proud of accomplishing a lifelong goal. We can be proud of other people, not only ourselves.

I think that if we don't have something to be proud of in our lives - even if it's someone else - we fall apart. Consider depressives. A main argument they have for their sadness is that their lives are meaningless - that is, they have done nothing they can look back on with fondness, or say "that mattered". They have nothing of which to be proud.

I'm not arguing that we strike pride from the list of deadly sins. Indeed, my purpose for bringing this up at all has nothing to do with my feelings about religion. I simply aim to inspire people to take a different look at things they take for granted - even if it's something as simple as their preconceived notion of the implications of a word.

That's today's advice, folks. Question everything. It's no coincidence that in our dreams, to take control we must question the world we find ourselves in.