High horses: Lets talk about pride

February 3, 2020Leave a comment

I did a post on gluttony a while back about how it often felt like the forgotten sin. I still think that, but I’m starting to think there might be one even more overlooked..

Pride.

Pride comes in a lot of forms, but the one I mainly want to talk about is the view of moral superiority. It’s rampant and we’re all guilty of it at sometimes, but I feel like it’s taking over the internet by storm.

People can talk about Instagram and envy till the cows come home, but I want to talk about people shaming others, blasting others, and pushing themselves up by pushing others down. It’s a school yard trick that’s gotten a much bigger audience with social media. It’s the constant “Actually you’re wrong and I can tell you why, because I’m right” not about one topic or two topics, but every topic all the time. Our views are firm, unmoving, and only the people who agree with us are worth listening too.

And for the record, I’m not just talking about politics. I’m talking about everything from people arguing the best way to feed a baby to the best way to teach a English class. Our views are viewed as the supreme in all subjects, and we’re willing to fight to the death about it. It’s not necessarily a new cultural shift, but it’s something we need to talk about because it’s starting to seep into every aspect of our lives.

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Little Fixes: Getting rid of my road rage made me a better person

May 16, 2019Leave a comment

We all have little problems, problems that we sweep under the rug because they don’t seem to be a big deal, or we don’t see how changing them will change anything else. We try to tackle bigger things, and sometimes that works out for us, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes these items are to big to tackle all at once. Smaller problems also take time, but not in the same way, they take a week or two of constant reminder and discipline instead of months of it. But they change our lives too, sometimes in ways we wouldn’t think.

I recently was in terrible 5 o’clock traffic and got cut off by someone who almost missed their exit. I cursed under my breath something terribly unkind and had a moment of clarity were I realized that that action didn’t warrant that insult. I’ve cut people off in traffic before and it really wasn’t that big of a deal, because more often then not, it’s a mistake. This break through thought kept circling back around every time I muttered something unkind in traffic, and I started to realize just how often I was doing it.

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Actually it does matter: Not dismissing your emotions.

November 19, 2018November 19, 20181 Comment

When I get upset I tend to tell myself “it doesn’t matter”. When people get angry they tend to tell themselves that the people they’re angry at “don’t matter”. When big things go wrong in our lives we tend to say “it doesn’t matter”. As if saying this over and over again will make it true, like it will take these things that obviously do matter and make them cease to.

It might seem harmless, but pretending things don’t bother you doesn’t make them stop bothering you, it just suppresses them so they can come back and bite you later. It’s why people bring up long past arguments in fights. Those things were never resolved, and yes, they’re still angry about them, even though the person they are fighting with has long since forgotten them. It’s a surprise to them, which normally makes the fight deteriorate at a rapid speed.

So yes, it does matter, it all matters. If you’re trying to dismiss something because you don’t think it should matter, that’s still something you need to dissect. If it shouldn’t be a big deal you need to figure out why it still feels like a big deal to you. Maybe you don’t need to get the other person involved, maybe it has nothing to do with them. If it is you, you should adjust, but if it’s them, or even a little bit of you both (which it normally is) you need to talk about it. Notice that I said talk, not scream, it’s normally best to calmly discuss things so you don’t end up attacking instead of resolving.

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