You are wealthy; you feel pride.
You are brilliant; you feel pride.
You are handsome; you feel pride.
You are healthy; you feel pride.
You are a victim of theft; you are wealthy no more.
You have dementia; you are brilliant no more.
You have an accident; you are handsome no more..
You fall chronically ill; you are healthy no more.
Wealth, brilliance, good looks, good health are all gifts of circumstances. Just as they were given, they may be taken away. Yet, many of us feel pride over such gifts. Sometimes, enough to belittle others who were not recipients of these gifts in such great quantities as ourselves.
Youth is a gift, yet, many young belittle the old. Even when the certainty exists that they will also grow old one day. There are many more such “gifts” that many of us feel proud of. However, when those are just gifts given to us by pure chance, such as, genetics, place of birth, surrounding environments and other circumstances, why do we feel pride?
Many people from some races, regions, or nations, consider themselves superior to others. They feel pride. Enough pride to belittle people of other races, regions or nations. But, what have they themselves done to feel superior? In many of their cases, their only “achievement” is having won the lottery of birth. They seem superior to themselves only because of circumstances created by those who came before them. They feel pride when they have neither done nor achieved anything to warrant the pride! It is similar to an ant sitting on top of an elephant and believing itself to be as tall as the elephant.
So, what can each of us really be proud of? What is truly ours — which isn’t ours simply because of circumstances such as our place of birth and genetics?
You are brilliant. Yet, you study and work hard to sharpen your brilliance. You may achieve greatness, or not. The only thing that is truly yours is the work that you have put in. Your brilliance may fade, circumstances may make it impossible for you to achieve greatness, but the effort that you have put in will remain. It will remain even after the end of time.
Our efforts are all that could truly be ours in this world. It is our creation and it will remain ours for ever.
Our personal achievements are the results of our efforts. However, achievements are also the result of circumstances. We may put in an enormous amount of effort, yet fail to achieve what we want. Therefore, achievements aren’t anything to be proud of. The only thing we can truly be proud of are the efforts we put in as we go through life.
However, many times, even our efforts are not completely ours.
You want to organize your room. You are a compulsive. You like order. You put in the effort and organize it they way you want.
You want to organize your room. You are lazy and do not care about order. Yet, you put in an effort to organize it the way you want. In spite of other “better” things you may want to do.
The amount of work may be the same in the two cases. However, in the second instance, you have put in more effort than the first. A constant amount of effort is put in to overcome your nature, in addition to the effort put into organization — It is similar to the difference between rolling a rock a certain distance up a hill versus rolling it the same distance down the hill.
As you can see, even our efforts at times, aren’t completely ours. The effort that comes out of our “gifted” nature isn’t completely ours. It is not as valuable as the effort that is put in by overcoming our own natures and limitations.
The effort put in by a workaholic isn’t the same as the effort put in by someone lazy. The workaholic puts in the effort because it is in his nature. Whereas, the lazy person puts in the work in spite of his nature.
There are nuances even here.
Suppose, a lazy person puts in an effort because it is mandated by external circumstances. And, another lazy person puts in an effort without any external coercion, either circumstantial or by other individuals. That effort has a much higher value than the one put in as a result of external coercion.
So, what is truly ours, and what can we truly be proud of?
We can be proud of any efforts that we put in that goes against our natures; efforts that are made without being driven by any external coercion. Such efforts are truly ours, because, it is not diluted by gifts such as our abilities, natures, or circumstances. All of which, may be taken away from us at any instance.
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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