May I get a little personal?

"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:8, NSV)

May I ask you a personal question that may seem intrusive?  I'd really like to know for my own edification. How do you define "pride"? I grew up with parents and grandparents, Southerners, who reflexively squelched any behavior my siblings and I may have used to over-esteem ourselves.  (Grand)Mama toned down any tendency toward undue self-promotion with, "Girl, don't you think too much of yourself now!" or "Boy, you're getting too big for your britches! (Mama, though, frowned on girls wearing pants. Talk about old-fashioned!)

"Children should be seen, not heard" became the expected refrain we recited and obeyed at tender ages.  With us, pride never entered the culture of Black life until the advent of the Civil Rights era.  And then it attached to our racial identity more than individually.  Say it loud! I'm  Black and I'm proud! marked the '80s decade.  Cool.  

Back to your definition of pride. Might you say pride denotes a personal emotional attitude?  Or perhaps it reflects excessive personal confidence?  Does pride express an excessive belief in superiority? Maybe, your pride fits more closely to biblical labels: arrogance, conceit, and haughtiness? Could pride merge all of these descriptors and become your "effervescent personality"?  Hmm.

I've come to understand that pride reflects myriad behaviors, but does my behavior define me who is me?   What if my behavior protects me from perceived attack? Does that excuse a haughty persona? Or what if like me, you were (are) painfully shy so much that your introversion becomes a "negative" value? 

Often when I've been in a transformative stage I'm described as arrogant. When all I am is in search of my emergent self? Have you ever been there? Hmm.

Good news for me, at least! I've learned that pride takes at least two kinds of permutations: good pride and bad pride.  A dear counselor-friend explained that good pride reflects a healthy belief in the "fruit of the Spirit."  It denotes recognizing those attributes with gratitude while bad pride is its polar opposite.  He tells an anecdote about his meeting a person of renown at a conference.  The person complimented him on his presentation and his suit.

"What, this old thing? I've had it for years," he replied.  

"Why did you reject, actually dismiss, my compliment," the wise man responded.  

My good friend saw his self-deprecation as if a Hollywood strobe light had shone.  He did not know how to accept a compliment.

"I apologized right then and there," he told me, and never again disparaged praise.  "Instead, I learned to say 'Thank you' and smile."

Lesson learned.