I have worked with some people over the years with serious pride issues. Surely you know the type I’m talking about. They see and hear only what they want and leave room for little to no outside input into their work, their projects, their relationships or their lives. They’re blind to everything outside themselves.

I remember one of my very first jobs working as a government employee. My immediate manager was tasked with training me to take over her job before she retired—that was the position I had applied for and what I was hired to do. The problem was, however, that she personally felt (I found out later) that I was being given this position at too young of an age. Afterall, she had had to work her way up over the years through the ranks having started as a janitor. I was a punk kid fresh out of college. So she stalled. I was given meaningless tasks for months but never trained to do any of her job. Many a night I fumed at home over this woman’s arrogance that she thought her personal assessment of me and the situation trumped what I had been hired to do. She was blind to my needs, my abilities, my ambitions and not least of all, our supervisor’s instructions. And I was being abused in the process. But of course, she thought she knew better. So I quit.

Ouch!

After recalling this little piece of my history, I’m reminded (uncomfortably so) that people who are walking in pride typically are very sensitive to and angered by the pride they see in others. They rarely, however, see it in themselves. That doesn’t reflect well on me.

Pride has traditionally been recognized to sit enthroned at the top of the Seven Deadly Sins.* Just as countless other sins have been understood to flow from the Seven (pride, lust, sloth, gluttony, greed, envy and anger), the other six have been recognized to flow from pride. It’s the headwaters, the source. Every sin humans commit is tainted with pride. It’s even been called the “original” sin. But of course, most of us, including myself, don’t see pride as our issue. It’s those other people that need to learn some humility. Right?