Pride comes before the fall. That's blanket. What we do not get to know rightly is whether pride always comes before the fall, or do we certainly fall every time when pride gets to the head? Are praises & feelings of pride for you* from family & best friends a matter of pride for yourself? It's not a big deal for your family and your besties to feel proud of you. They know you are good and they are proud of you. They are your blood & flesh; even best friends are. I have best friends with whom I've shared a good part of my life since schooling, eating from the same plate, sleeping on the same bed, going through life's ups and downs, and also having fun together, and so on.. for two decades. You are proud of yourself because of the fact that all these people are proud of you. You feel proud and you move on. Period. In such instances there is no fall coming. This is a no-brainer. Even if you ask them openly (to remove any doubts you may have) 'are you proud of me?', they are gonna say 'of course' as if you asked 'did you sleep last night?'.
What is surprising is when acquaintances or colleagues or other friends (who are not best friends) say they are proud of you, and they mean it, when you least expect them to. That is the point of contention.
Human feelings are a puzzle in two ways.
1. The people you want to keep at arm's length or those who are not in your inner circle end up loving you and being proud of you, more than you can take. It's what I'm terming the FOOL's syndrome - the Fear Of Overwhelming Love. You do not understand the reason behind their affection/pride for you, and yet they bombard you with exactly that, growing into a fear of when & how they threaten to bury you in their affection, pride, and ultimately their love for you, so much that you break the chain with them. (Come on, I'm kidding. Nobody's like that these days!).
2. The people you expect to love you, or to be proud of you, are not there yet. Let me first of all warn that such expectations are the enemy of inner peace. Despite that, as feeling beings, you expect a great majority of your acquaintances to be proud of you. Sometimes you expect more and sometimes less. But you almost always expect. And when once in a while such expectations become a reality, you are proud of yourself. That pride is what surprises me all the more!
If you don't accept, acknowledge and feel humbled by their feeling of pride for you, you become cynics and recluses. And so you fall. If you do accept them, you become self-glorifying, and sometimes even arrogant, basking in the thought that you reign supreme in their hearts. And so you fall, again. The huge space between these extremes is a fully grey area, and somewhere in that grey area is where humility lies, I think. In such instances, it would help for us to be proud of ourselves, just to ourselves, and just enough to keep our head high in our heart's eyes, no more no less. Isn't that enough? And that moment of self-humility radiates universally, and is a thing to be certainly proud of! I think humility is by far the most important and, at the same time, the most underrated virtue.
* - 2nd person singular throughout the post is simply for convenience of conveying the message!
