In the Season of Pride

 For most of my life, I am have inflated with an enormous sense of pride about myself. As such, among the deadly sins, pride is almost certainly the one I am most guilty of.

I have gone through my life thinking that I was special in so many ways, distinct from my fellow human beings by having some special set of talents, particularly in my intelligence. To be short, I thought I was extraordinarily smart. 

I was gifted in school in many topics from a young age, and curious to learn. So in the this way, the opinion about me was correct. But smart--no, not really. I cannot say that about myself given the magnitude of the poor decisions I have made throughout my life, particularly in failing to learn from the lessons that were provided for me, so obviously, and continuing to make the same mistakes again. In that way, I am not smart at all. I am particular thick and unintelligent.

Much of this came from my pride, a pride that said that I was not subject to the rules that applied to other people. My pride told me that I could make up the rules of my life as I went along, according to my own design. My pride said that I would escape the consequences of not following these rules because I was special in some way, and the world would recognize that, and organize itself around accommodating my specialness.

It took me so long to see all of this clearly, and now that I have come to do so, I can look back at the years of my life and see the pattern so clearly, and the harm it has caused myself and others. I see how all the puffery about my potential, that I so abundantly wallowed in during my youth, has brought so little fruit. My life is one of the least consequential ones ever lived, I now feel, although to say such a thing would itself be a form of pride. 

Yet I cannot escape how much I have let down God in relation to the gifts and blessings He bestowed on me, and with which I have done little in terms of sharing them with others, and bringing others to God by my works. I can look at any part of my past in see how much more I could have done, had I not been carrying about such enormous pride.

According to Church doctrine, the remedy of pride is humility, and this is now what I seek, as a thirsty man seeks water. I have said I want to be a giver, and in my humility I can see only how little I have to give at this point in my life, and I must be content that I cannot give any more. I have no great fortune that I have been hoarding that I release, which can suddenly make up for all the years that I have been contracted. There is no easy way out. That itself is among the greatest of humilities.