Essay On Pride Or Feeling Of Being Proud

Pride is something that happens every minute of everyday. It is something that some feel cannot be controlled. Sometimes it’s bad sometimes it’s good, but most of the time it is viewed as having a negative connotation. I looked in two different dictionaries. The first two definitions are from Dictionary.com. The first definition said that pride is, “The state or feeling of being proud.” Definition two said, “A becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one’s positions or character; self-respect; self-esteem.” A third definition is from Kid Dictionary which said, “A feeling of self-respect and personal worth.” If you notice, all three of these definition have something in common. They all have the word “self” in it. Because …show more content…
Sometimes it is because we are not satisfied. I was listening to sermon recently when I attended camp at Hume Lake. The speaker stated that because of pride we will never be fully satisfied because pride makes us feel like we always deserve more than what we have, but that God wants us to find satisfaction in Him. In Proverbs 16:18-19 it states this “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be lonely in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.” Pride when found in yourself other than in God, is a terrible thing. In a story called The Scarlet Ibis, written by James Hurst; It talks about little disabled boy by the name of Doodle and his older brother. Doodles older brother has so much pride. He has so much pride because his little brother is disabled, and he doesn’t want to be ashamed of his brother that he teaches him to walk, swim, climb trees, etc. Further in the story the older brother says “ Once I had succeeded in teaching Doodle to walk, I began to believe in my own infallibility.” Infallibility means inability to make a mistake. He is so full of himself that he believes he can not make a mistake. In the end through his pride gets in his way and causes him to leave his brother alone in the rain and when he returned to his brother he found him dead. His pride made him kill his brother. In an article named “Why pride is …show more content…
In other words, pride can sometimes be beneficial. There have been studies done to show that pride is not always a negative thing. George Eliot says, “Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us feel witty.” Michel de Montaigne states, “I do not care what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.” Theses quotes demonstrate that pride is not only a negative matter. Eliot explains that when we recognize through pride that we are in a better position than another, then compassion can along with pride can led us to generosity. These are just a few things that explain why pride is good. In the article, “When all you have left is your pride,” a study was done by Ms. Williams and Dr. DeSteno. This article states, “The participants sat down to solve similar puzzle. The students who had been warmly encouraged reported feeling more pride than others. But they also struck their partners in the exercise as being more dominant and more likeable those who didn’t have the inner glow of self-approval. The participants, whether they had been buttered up or not, were completely unaware of this effect on the group of dynamics.” The scientist said “We wondered at the beginning whether these people were going to come across as arrogant jerks,” Dr. DeSteno said “Well no, just the opposite; they were seen as dominate but also also likeable. That’s not a combination we expected.”