Comparison Makes Us Proud

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Thanks to an ongoing discussion with a friend at church, I have been chewing on the phrase "I'm proud of you" for a while now. As a matter of semantics, there are those who argue that there is a good way to be proud. I am not sure I agree.

On the way to work this morning, a woman cut me off while she sped in a 25mph zone just before we caught up to traffic at a red light. Naturally, I noticed and paid attention to her bumper sticker, which proclaimed her pride at some scholastic accomplishment of her middle school age child. This kind of pride is the reason why pride is bad. It was not enough that her child succeeded. She needed everyone to know that her child was better than others.

CS Lewis wrote that pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It was only when this woman compared her child to those of all other parents that its achievements mattered. My parents were pleased with our accomplishments, but they were never so proud as to plaster their cars with asinine bumper stickers that are no longer valid in a few years when we moved to the next higher school level.

When I was a student, I was frequently embarassed by my grades. It wasn't that I earned poor marks, because I went all through school with a very lofty GPA. What embarassed me was when professors and teachers drew attention to me. It set up enmity between me and my fellows, not that I was mad at them but that they loathed me. I truly desired to do well, I just preferred to keep it to myself.

I am not one of the type of people who likes to talk about what he has accomplished. Frequently, I do things and keep them secret as long as possible because I do not want the attention. I compare my present self with my self of yesterday and determine if I am making progress compared to who I was and not compared to other people. I don't have a brag book or a "yay, me" wall, and although I have a folder full of recommendation letters received over the last decade or so, it's secure in a box on the floor of the library in the loft where I can find it if I need it but where nobody else is likely to look.

People think they are better than other people because on comparison they appear to be so. Truth is however that we don't know anything about them. Many people are not doing as well as they lead us to believe and many people are better of than we might think at passing glance. Most of the best moralists and entrepreneurs look more like the meek of the earth than the most successful of men. After the final accounting it really doesn't matter if you are better than someone else, because we're all reduced to the lowest common denominator at death. What really matters is that you are a better person today than you were yesterday. That's the only comparison that really matters.

If you use the stickers, post your accomplishments, or talk incessantly about the great things you or your family have done, that's great. Talk about it with the people you admire and of whom you are 'proud' because of what they do and not for how it makes you look. Maybe that will incentivize them to continue to achieve, and that's the only context of which I am aware in which they are appropriate topics of conversation. Do your loved ones know you admire them in any other way than that you hang bumper stickers and plaques on your cars or walls? Tell them, but not as a means to lift you as much as a means to uplift them.

Let God himself be the example of conversation:

And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. --Matthew 3:17

His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. --Matthew 25:21