The Cost of Pride

The Chinese culture has long emphasized the virtue of pride, and it has taken me years to unlearn that.

In fact, as I observe pride in people, I cannot help but feel that it has cost people dearly in personal and professional happiness.

Because of pride, someone who actually does not have the ability or bandwidth would wager with someone else that he could do something and in fact would rather do that instead of admitting defeat. The lack of self-knowledge renders him completely ignorant of why he decided to wager in the first place - it was all because he was upset at the other party, or else he would not have bothered. So off he went, taking on something just for the sake of pride, only to realize that he should never have done it. In fact, if only he could graciously admit defeat, he would have come out as a winner. A paradox indeed.

But he kept going, getting exhausted, sleep-deprived and even more unhappy because he had taken on something that really were beyond his means, while getting even more upset at the other person because the other person is the reason why he is now sleep-deprived, exhausted, and bad-tempered, not ever pausing to realize that it was precisely due to his own sleep-deprivation, exhaustion and bad temper that he lost sight of what is important, and let his pride take over.

The vicious cycle continued. The cost of pride is truly enormous, especially for people who are insecure to start with. Defensiveness comes with insecurity and pride. I have observed that in people's professional lives and personal lives, and not even once did I see any positive outcome for anyone of them.