pride

the bible cautions us of the sinfulness of pride, but what does that mean? The way I see it there are two kinds of pride, legitimate and illegitimate, legit pride is a healthy thing, it's good to feel proud of a job well done, whether it's business, academic, arts, competition, or your craft, you should strive to do well, remember, when your gone it's the only thing others who never knew you will judge you by, and I can tell you from much experience, the accomplishment your feeling will help motivate you when you fail, and trust me you will fail. But there's the other type of pride, a self righteous pride that God says he hates, when we think of self righteousness images of snobbery and elitism come to mind, but there's a much more common self righteousness that we have accepted as a society, it starts when we are children, and were told to be proud of our race  (unless you have the misfortune of being born white, then your taught to feel guilt) or being female, or gay, just being born the right color/sex/etc. is not an accomplishment, you had nothing to do with it, it may be a point of pride for your parents but society wants you to believe your important (which you are but not for those reasons) so they whisper lies to you, that kind of worthless pride cant motivate you to excellence! When I was about 9 years old I entered a model car contest, I loved cars and building models, thought I was pretty good at it, when the day of judgment came I watched as the judges immediately began placing white "participation" ribbons on the entries they eliminated out of hand, when they came to mine my heart pounded hoping they would walk by but, the white ribbon landed on mine as well, it was crushing and i felt shame, after the event I didn't even want to pick it up, but I forced myself to, on the way out I tossed the car and the junk ribbon in the trash outside the door, it hurt but it made me stronger. Sons and daughters set the bar higher for yourself, devote yourself to the things you love and excel at it, in doing so you'll enrich your life and make the world a better place, failure is part of success, Thomas Edison was once asked how it felt to fail 1000 times while working on the light bulb, his answer, "I didn't fail, it was an invention that took 1000 steps"