Pride and Foolishness, Revised

People always say that you should “look before you leap”, Think something over before you really do it, But honestly, is it really that terrible to act without thinking?

A little earlier this year, Mr. Gozzo, the band teacher, was handing out the new song that we were going to learn, a West Side Story compilation.  When the paper was placed on my music stand, a big smile came across my face.  The song looked like a piece of cake!  I didn’t even try to think the song over in my head before I started playing it, or begin to try it out like the rest of the band was doing.  So when Mr. Gozzo told us to try the song out together, I finally tried.  But as soon as I put my trumpet up to my lips, I realized just how challenging the song actually was!  I couldn’t play a bit of it!

The book that I wrote this post about originally was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, a book that I am long done with.  It is set in Germany during world war two.  The main character is named Liesel, and she is a young girl who is well behind her class in reading.  One Day, the teacher in Liesel’s school Tests everyone in Liesel’s class on their reading, that is, everyone but Liesel.  Liesel, because of her pride, decides to go in front of the class and read aloud anyway, to prove that she can.  But when she gets there, she can’t read a word!  This gets here into a load of trouble. 

Just like when I thought that I could play that piece of music and I couldn’t, Liesel thought she could read, but totally unable to.  We both had too much pride.   Liesel was rash and acted to protect herself, not realizing the consequences of her actions.  Now that I think of it, any human-caused problem in this entire world could have been prevented if only the person who caused the problem thought about what it might do.  Think about it:  fights, arguments, even wars could have been prevented if only we could just think about what might happen afterwards.  So why don’t we just run things through our heads before something awful happens?

But I had only told half the story.  After Liesel had been punished, she was teased by her schoolmate, which led up to her having a fistfight with a boy in her school, with her as the champion.  This made her feared, but also respected. She was no longer the weak little girl who couldn’t read.  And back to my example, it’s been a little while since I got that West Side Story piece from Mr. Gozzo.  Now, I think that it is the easiest piece in my entire folder!  You see, sometimes it pays to be proud.  I suppose there can be a good proud and a bad proud.  What would have happened if Liesel hadn’t been so rash?  She would have staid the week little girl who cant read for the rest of her life, or at least the rest of her school life.  But me, that was the bad kind of proud.  Sure, I now think that the song is easy, but is that because I was so heedless when I first received the song?  No!  It is because I practiced. 

So I guess that you could say that good pride is when your foolhardy but your actions benefit you in some way or another.  There may still be other options than doing something reckless to get what you want, but when you have to act in a second’s notice, like Liesel did, there’s really no other option.  Bad pride, on the other hand, is when you do something impulsive that has no positive affects towards you or anyone else.  Its as if everything that we do is somehow rated on how it will affect us in the future.  If things get better as time progresses, it’s going to be good pride.  If things get worse, its bad pride.  But there are just so many variables in the problem!  What it you act on impulse, doing what you can before its too late. I guess sometimes you just have to judge for yourself.  
 

As the book goes on, Liesel grows as a character, and her pride seems to grow with her.  She begins to steal books (hence the title of the book).  No shy little girl without pride would be able to do that.  She may have had doubts, but she knew that she would be able to do it one way or another.  Pride is what pushed her through the pages of the book, what made her endure the war and everything that happened to her.  Judging by what Liesel did, I would say that if someone thinks they can’t do something, they can never do it, but if they have pride and know that they are able, they will do whatever they wanted to do.  So next time there is something that you need to do and you’re having doubt, just be proud (but not rash) and you will get it done.