When I was growing up, there was a plate in the cabinet with
a Currier-and-Ives-type illustration of a little Dutch boy with a satisfied smirk
on his face, skating right toward a huge hole in the ice. The inscription around the edge of the
plate? “Pride Goeth Before a Fall.”
The other day, I started to tell a friend about one of my published
articles about English composer Herbert Howells. And yet, within about a sentence, my
articulate self had vanished. My voice
became dismissive, even satirical, and I was rolling my eyes and making
faces. Fortunately, this wise friend
stopped me in my tracks, and said something to the effect of, “Liz, start that
sentence over as if you were proud of yourself.”
Unlike many people, I think I have never wavered in my sense
of connectedness to Source, and that may be a remarkable thing. But the empty hole inside has had to do with
my expectations about how other people will value me and my talents and
accomplishments. Those are two totally
different things, and at least I’m relieved to “get” the difference. There are three things that I am the most
“proud” of – achieving my MMus (in historical musicology) from the University
of London; my lifelong efforts to sing choral evensong; and my two articles on
Howells. For a whole host of reasons,
not the least of which is that none of these really “register” in the US as major
accomplishments, I’ve never had the sense that my efforts have been widely noticed
or appreciated (and of course because that was my belief, I drew that reality
to me.) And none of the three “earned”
me any money. In fact, directly or
indirectly, they all cost me money I didn’t have! So even now, when I feel stronger and more
powerful than I ever have in my life, my tendency to make pre-emptive fun of
myself before someone else can do it for me came to the fore.
It’s so funny. I
don’t think I even know how to have the kind of pride cautioned against in that
traditional adage. The kind of snarky,
“Nyah, nyah, I’m winning this race and you aren’t!” “I’ve got a million dollars and you don’t!”
“I’m in charge here, and you’re an underling!”
I mean, it all seems so school-boyish and as far as can possibly be from
my experience. And yet there are more
subtle forms of pride, Jane Austen-like, and I suspect in ways I have been
guilty on occasion of hiding fearfully behind a mask of superiority or
detachment. Yet I can’t help but think
that for many of us women (and certainly women of my generation and earlier),
the whole problem is the reverse. We
were decidedly not encouraged early
on to “be ourselves” or to achieve or win the race or exude power. So even the most modest efforts to blow our
own horn feel uncomfortable for some of us, and we may fall back on kind of
twisted/self-effacing humor, cynicism, anger or frustration.
What is the “third way” here? Pride, perhaps, that is not referential to
the status of others; that is not dependent on the success or failure of
others. The pride that says, “Woo,
hoo! I’ve done something where I am
really aligned with Source, and I am who I was put on the planet to be! Wow, I’m in the groove, I’m flowing with the
gentle, supportive river of life! I feel
joyful and powerful! Life is good!” On this frigid winter day, I don’t believe
that the inevitable outcome of that kind of pride should be falling through the
ice, and speaking only for myself, I need to replace the ice skater image pronto!
As I write this, I realize that there is one more thing I am
proud of – this blog. Yes, it’s up there
with the other three. Despite what I
said the other day about fearlessness, I have not yet built up the courage to open
this up to reader comments, so please forgive me for that. Just know that I treasure my readers and hope
that 2016 brings you, too, some things to be proud of in a new-fashioned way! We’re doing it!