Pride Kills

At least some types of pride tend to greatly reduce your lifetime and your sanity.

A better alternative I would say is compassion for yourselves and others. This leads to both your longevity and theirs.

My experience with pride was that being brought up Swiss American you only could be the best, you could not be anything else. My father was valedictorian of his high school senior class and I remember crying because my penmanship wasn't very good in school so he tried to force me to be as good at him for hours until I just started crying. Good penmanship wasn't to be mostly because I was also forced to be right handed when I preferred my left or either (Actually, I was always sort of ambidextrous so I was very coordinated with both hands. But this didn't extend to perfect penmanship. And since my father got an award for the best penmanship and mathematics in 8th grade in the whole state of Washington he wanted me to be the best too. This just wasn't going to happen.

At age 10 to 15 I got childhood epilepsy which greatly reduced my grades from the straight A student I had been in grade school up through 6th grade in order to survive this illness. Which was kind of difficult because my 5 years older male cousin was captain of the debating team and got scholarships to USC and NYU Law School so basically he went to school for free. So, this was kind of a difficult  act for me to follow.

In my teens and 20s after 18 I found myself slowly until 21 and after 21 serious about committing suicide because I couldn't go in the directions I wanted to. So, I felt sort of lost in some ways until I got married and had a son at age 26. I was surprised then how much attention and how much people thought of me because I had just got married and had a son which then seemed to me more important to people than me already having a college degree and a good career. This surprised me a lot.

I suppose if you are trying to become a soldier, officer or police man or woman pride might be useful but you still must realize that that pride likely will reduce your lifespan greatly. So, each person has to decide about pride themselves.

I found that it was only going to get me killed by suicide or just taking so many risks that I was going to die by 25. So, actually getting married and having a son actually saved my life because I likely wouldn't be alive now without people (my son especially) to stay alive for and to care for.

However, the pride I was taught to expect from myself almost killed me between 18 and 24 years of age. Just remember Compassion for yourself and others will keep you alive to old age. But Pride often will kill you before 25 or 30. This is just a good thing to know about life.

There is an old saying about this: "Pride comes before the Fall!"

This is something to consider too.