Old Man: Pride

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

Most of the time when I would go visit my old friend, he would be waiting on his porch. His eyes would be fixed on a point slightly above the horizon. White, wiry hairs corkscrewed out from below his wrinkled forehead and above his pale blue eyes. On a favorable interpretation, he looked serene. On an unfavorable one, he looked vacant.

As soon as I was within earshot, the gaze broke. He called out a greeting. Sometimes this greeting was in the form of a "Hey there." Other times, he would begin speaking about a topic as though we were already in the middle of a conversation. He simply supplanted the long-running monologue taking place in his mind with a new actor. Once he called out, "I have no time for prideful people!" I replied with a grin, "Well I think you can keep your appointment with me."

I climbed the greying wooden steps and crossed the creaking patio to take a seat tangential to him. The wicker chair crackled in response to my weight.

"Did you think the way something starts speaks to how it will proceed and finish?" He asked.

"My historian friends would agree with that suggestion. They always claim you won't understand where you are unless you know where you are coming from. In exploration at least, I would think that's true. It would be essential to get one's bearings and keep an impeccable record of your route. So yes, knowing the way something starts is important to understanding it."

"Apply that very thought to people. How do they begin? As itty-bitty babies. At their own behest? No. Of course not. They're brought into the world unbeknownst to them. There's no choice in it for the living. No way to take credit for the start. Everyone is completely dependent to start. Show me the person who has given birth to herself, and I'll show you the person whose pride is well-placed. As for the rest of the arrogant dreamers, leave me be! For all of their accomplishments and accolades, they always start off as babies. The prideful live as though they've outgrown their dependency. But have they?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone," he lowered his head and glared into my eyes, "at every point in their lives--is woefully dependent on a great many factors outside of their control. Your ticker has to keep ticking, the beams above your head and the planks below your feet have to maintain their integrity. Itty-bitty little cells need to keep performing their tasks without fail or else. Gasp! Heart attack! Boom! Structural collapse! Agh! Cancer! I could go on and on. My point is that no one is in as much control as the prideful person likes to purport."

At this point in the performance, I felt it my place to play the contrarian. "I'll concede that a person does not begin in a meritorious way and that much of our continued existence is owed to outside factors rather than those we are responsible. Still, if we slice all of that away, we get to the core of people. Even if the great preponderance of human existence is accidental, there is a sliver that is purposeful. The prideful simply grab hold of that sliver for all its worth, maximize it, and admire their accomplishments. How can that be so wrongheaded? If we all have our slivers and some of us take advantage of them and some of us prefer complacency, how is it more reprehensible to exercise our slivers rather than let them atrophy?"

He scowled at me. "I have not suggested that a person shouldn't take responsibility for what he can do. Nothing of the sort. Prideful people do more than take responsibility for they can do. They take credit for everything good and true in this world. I used to work for this woman. She waged a long battle to get where she was, I do not doubt that. She let you know--sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly--that she won that battle and rightfully so. In the process, she made sure you knew that she was above you and that you could not have won that same battle. That's what grates me--the inconsistency of it all. The old think they're better than the young because they've lived longer. If you give the young a little bit of time, they'll get to be just as old though. The strong can pummel you into submission, but what if they snapped a tendon way-back-when? Then they'd be scrawny like the rest of us. Yes, Ms. Swanson, you are the vice president and that is a laudable position to be in. But don't act as though you haven't caught a break along the way. We've all caught breaks and breaks have broken us. There are headwinds and tailwinds. The only sensible thing is to get off your high horse and walk alongside the rest of us."

"I think you underestimate how much of life is about the choices people make. You seem to think that because there are choices, and that the viability of those choices is often itself unchosen, that people should ease up on defining themselves by their choices--specifically the successful choices. Why begrudge people a sense of accomplishment for utilizing their talents? Your pride is another person's self-confidence."

"That's not true. Self-confidence doesn't make other people feel small. We are all itty-bitty. Besides being a lie, pride is disharmonious. Don't play the fool, Victor. You know full well that attitude I am talking about. I think you just like watching me get all in a tizzy. You need to be more careful with the elderly. I'm fragile you know. A regular porcelain doll." He smirked and the wrinkles in his cheeks folded together.

"Right, right. You caught me. Humility is a great attribute. I'll take it over the opposite. Still, talking small and being small is not so good as talking small and being big."

"Fine, fine." He smiled at me, but I could not leave well enough alone. Now that I had taken up a position, I felt the need to keep defending it.

"And I think you fail to grasp a mitigating factor in making pride so bad. It is completely natural. Show me the person that isn't prideful and I'll show you a corpse. Everyone is proud of themselves. Some are just more public with it. Some are proud of being exceptional. Some are proud of being meek. Some are proud of being in between, of being the average man. There are people walking around with humble faces that hide a holier-than-thou attitude. I think it was Twain who said something like, "When a man keeps telling you he's trustworthy, it's time to check his pockets for the sterling silver." Wouldn't the same thing apply here? A person who says he hates pride is actually quite prideful and only hates pride in others because it takes up room his own pride would otherwise fill."

His head kicked back slightly with a snicker. "Such a clever man, you are! I knew there was a good reason why we're friends. I'll only say this much: something being natural does nothing to excuse it. It only explains the origin of the thing."

Energy pulsated through my body as victory was now at hand. "Says the man who earlier claimed where something comes from says a lot about where it's going. And if I agree, then from nature to nature and no one is to blame at all. We're born, live, and die naturally and nothing we are predisposed to doing is unnatural. The only unnatural thing is to poke your head out of the flow of things and criticize it for not going a different, unnatural direction. So you are the one out of line, not the prideful people."

He laughed heartedly. "Very good my dear sophist, very good! And good luck with all that. If you'll settle for only what it natural, you'd better grab your cloak and dagger. It's a mad world you'll be a citizen of." His hand grabbed for the steaming mug on the little brown table between us. He shakily took a sip. "Checkers?"

"Sure."