Hezo Kittie

The Daily Deuce #6

Continuing on my all time favorite theme, Pride, the one that made Brad Pitt kill Kevin Spacey, I would always think to myself, "Well, okay Mr. Lewis, you may be right. But why is that true in the first place?" The angrier I get when I see OTHER people's pride is a barometer for my OWN pride. That seems paradoxical. I feel like theoretically I should be able to be angered by other people's pride without being proud myself. Check it:

1.) No person is exempt from pride. It's natural to think, "Well, shucks, I am pretty darn great," when people take notice of our wealth, or intellect, or sexual prowess, or fun life, or grand generosity.
2.) When I don't just acknowledge but actually become angry at someone acting proudly, the anger stems from ignorance, because I say to myself, "Why the fuck did she act that way, that's fucked up, I wouldn't do that."

Ah, but I would, I would merely refuse to acknowledge it. I was walking back from the show tonight with Hannah, and she said, "That Dana girl sucks. When I first met her I was walking and her and Kellie were walking towards me and I knew I'd recognized her before and she's always been eyeing me but too intimidated to introduce herself. But this time she was adamant about introducing herself and repeatedly showing off the fact that she was friends with Kellie. She felt sooo cool to be friends with Kellie."

My angered self wanted to counter, "Isn't that why you befriended Kellie in the first place? Becauuse when you saw her you thought she looked so cool and people took notice of her and you wanted to be associated with that?"

But my anger was simply my proud nature trying to ignore the fact that I am in no way exempt from this form of pride. I would sometimes think to myself how cool it would be to be dating that one hip girl because I would be really cool and people would think we were such a 'cute' couple. It feels pretty shameful to explicitly put those words down, to even acknowledge that those thoughts have crossed my mind, that I am no exception, no more righteous that anyone else.

Pride isn't just bad. It's the opposite of love, it wants things merely so other people can't have them, it is jealousy because people have things that it doesn't, it is impenetrably stubborn because it never thinks it's wrong, it is satisfied with its self-righteousness because it thinks it's better than those 'bad' people in the world. Pride is the deadliest sin because it truly is the root of all evil.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." - Matthew 7:3-5