Hear me out 🙂
Pride… being proud – can definitely go too far. Being #1 on the seven deadly sins list will tell you all you need to know about pride.
There is a dark place pride can go. The hubris, the selfishness, the superiority – that side of the pride coin is about as ugly as it gets.
And maybe in our younger, less wiser days pride got the best of us.
I know it did me.
But now, in my Iron Age, being a little wiser, more thoughtful, humble – more at peace with myself and the world – I feel I can better appreciate the moments of pride that occasionally bubble up. The innocent side of pride, when you really do feel proud of yourself for something.
It usually happens after a really good workout, or a really good run – and maybe it’s more gratefulness than pride – but I feel really good about myself – at 54 years told, still crushing workouts, still hammering runs.
I tell myself, “that’s pretty darn good for a 54 yr old guy.” and for a moment I feel kind of proud of myself for still going hard after all these years.
And the more I think about it, it is a combination of pride and gratefulness. I am a really lucky man that I can still do this, at the level I do it. Lucky. Thankful.
The pride is fleeting. It goes away after a few minutes.
But the gratefulness – that stays.
Maybe we have learned a thing or two after all these years.
