A condition of the human heart that feeds off of the demolishment and degrading of others. This blob, this monster that lives in each and everyone of us only grows when it can place itself higher than the next person. It feeds on the failures of it's closest friends and as it grows, its strength grows along with it. I have noticed that pride is a constant battle. I am a solider in out of the field of love and hate fighting for the right--love. Yet, as hard as i fight, the war rages on and it seems as though it will be a lifelong battle.
I don't think it is only us as individuals. We are currently based in a society that is capitalistic. That is, we constantly rank ourselves in order to push others to improve. Though this helps our products and keeps cost down, it comes at the price of stress and greed. Even built into us from an early age we find that grades matter, class rank is essential to look upon, and SAT scores define your intelligence. Though many of us can mentally recognize these as farce statements, it is much easier to know, than to believe. And so we fall into this trap of who's better than who and supposedly rank ourselves in our own worth. Then as soon as we know how is above us in ranking, we work to move past them while we feast upon those who fall into a lower ranking than ours.
The only issue with this is that if you place us on a true scale of self worth; 1. You compare apples to oranges because people come in varieties; 2. At the end of the day, we are all the same. We all have the same option of loving and causing peace and helping the world. And at the end, we all die. yes, everyone is worm food. Therefor, if i can accumulate all the money of the world and be considered the most powerful man-- then die in a car accident. What good was my money. Nothing. Therefor, a pride of wealth, power, is only as good as what the individual uses it for. Pride takes a backseat as we are supposed to take that power and use it to serve others, placing yourself at a lower ranking than those you are serving. This will store up treasures in Heaven, which do matter after you are dead. So pride, just like any other sin, can be defined as "promising what it can not deliver".
Though this is a battle, which seems to have no end, it is clearly worth fighting the good fight to never feed the monster. I would consider this not a mindset, like many things are, but rather the fight is very physical. By literally placing others before you in line, investing your money into other's futures, and by living as though everyone is more important than yourself, this monster will have no power. This is ultimately where i want to be. People have so much worth and value, it only makes sense to try to show the same love to them as God has to me.
So i will continue to fight the blob that is starving inside me, and by the power of God i believe that i can keep it starving.
