Too shy for the waiter/ Too confident to impress

The annonymous comment in my last post made me delve deeper into the emotion of pride. I thought about whether pride is truly necessary in our lives, whether it impedes spiritual growth, and how much of it I had within me that I never realised, and what opportunities do I have to delfate it.

Why are some people so painfully shy? Why are some people so irritatingly extroverted? Why can't some people even raise their hand at a restaurant to call the waiter for chilli flakes, while some people can spontaneously dance in the streets? I figured that this all boils down to two factors that have significant influence on our behaviours: Pride, and Self-Esteem.

Although to many, these two emotional and psychological elements may seem to be similar, I realised that they could actually have a negative relationship. Yeap. It could mean that the fuller the person is with pride, the less self-esteem he has, and vice-versa. Think about it. What is pride? I would say that it is an emotion caused be the desire to remain superior to others. Pride could even be the desire itself. Self-esteem, on the other hand, could be the extent of a person's confidence in his or her identity and ability for performance.

With those two definitions, the unwillingness of the person who is not willing to call out to the waiter can be explained. He has low self-esteem, so he fears that he might screw-up while asking for chilli flakes and the waiter might laugh at him. This is when his pride kicks in, because he does not want to feel inferior to the waiter. Makes sense? Take an instance from the other extreme: nutty science geniuses. Many people say that geniuses are a little cranky and often to weird stuff in public. Don't you think that this is because of their extremely high self-esteem? They have such a strong sense of identity and so much confidence in themselves that they don't give chicken shit about what people think about them. These people have no desire to feel greater than others because they already know what they can do that other's can't.

Of course, there are many other cases of people who are extroverted because they want to feed their pride. But I doubt these people have attained a high-level of self esteem. Yes, my thesis of pride can be rebutted in more than one way. But for know, with that knowledge, I understand the importance of self-esteem and the damages pride can cause to a person.

(Got to go deflate my pride now. Will continue next time).