A Deadly Sin?

The positive emotion I feel most often is that of pride. I have never understood why it is supposed to be a sin, whatever form it takes. I think it’s perhaps something of the hairshirt tendency of certain early religions where everything was to do with God because everything was pre-ordained. Anyway, my pride tends to be in other people’s achievements, especially where I have had a certain input.

As a teacher it is really nice to see your former students doing well. For 5 years I was teaching English to prospective Doctors at St George’s University. After that I taught students from a number of different disciplines. I follow a number of them on Instagram and they have, without exception, done incredibly well in their careers in the years since I taught them. One of my real pleasures is seeing their progress as they do so much good in their different fields. Some of them are kind enough to attribute a small measure of their success to my teaching. I definitely helped in the early days as they were getting to grips with Academic English and Academic life in general. Although I know that their success is almost entirely down to their hard work since those days, I feel proud that they have taken some of my influence into the world and worked with it.

The same goes for my children. Their successes and difficulties are theirs but I hope that the influence of myself and my wife has given them a very strong base from which to launch themselves into the world. Every one of them has given me a great feeling of pride at various times over the years and it is one of the real joys of parenthood for me. They still want to come to concerts with me which means so much as I never take it for granted. My daughters and I are going to My Chemical Romance at Wembley Stadium next July and I know it’s going to be an incredible experience.

Very occasionally I allow myself a small measure of pride in myself. I feel that some of my blog posts are as good as anything you will read anywhere. The fact that people read, like and respond in the comments gives me a huge lift, especially the latter, because it tells me that I have struck a chord.

So there you have it. Pride is not a sin to me, deadly or otherwise. It’s one of the most positive emotions you can feel in other people’s achievements.