On Pride

Pride. That word scares me, because there's a VEEERRRYYY thin line between "feeling good about one's achievement" and "arrogance". Pride scares me because I don't want to feel the "arrogant" kind of pride. A few years ago I found this quote that sums up what I want to feel about my "achievements". The quote says:

Don't take pride, take pleasure. 

Unfortunately I don't remember where I found it so I can't link it, but that quote really hit me deeply because I DO want and I CAN feel pleasure in my achievements. I DO want and I CAN feel joy when I've knocked down a challenge (jumping for joy like in the image below), but I want to stay away from the kind of pride that says that it's all about ME, MYSELF, and MY ABILITY. The kind of pride that wants me to SHOW OFF to others (as if punching your own chest proudly) that I AM able, capable, talented, etc. 

And I've been guilty of this kind of pride. This kind of pride doesn't even have to be shown verbally (meaning nobody may even know about it). It's what's inside my heart that tells me whether what I feel is simply pleasure/joy or the arrogant kind of pride. That's why I'm wary about distinguishing the two. 


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Pride scares me because there are too many "ugly" kinds of pride. Too proud to say sorry. Too proud to admit a mistake. Too proud to accept help. You name it!

My closest friends and I were discussing pride in our email exchange the other day and I find my answers from C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". Let me just copy and paste the important parts:

Pleasure in being praised is not Pride.... The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.' The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom. That is why vanity, though it is the sort of Pride which shows most on the surface, is really the least bad and most pardonable sort.....

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably, all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

One of my close friends also gave me this quote taken from a mutual friend's FB status:

Humility is acknowledging our total dependence upon God and seeking His will for every decision. When people disagree with me, do I listen from my heart or argue my position? In my spirit, do I tend to cut off those who ignore me? Do I find it extremely difficult to admit when I am wrong? Do I give my opinions before I am asked for them? Am I quick to correct others when they make mistakes? (ARS session 2)

So, the quote I found years ago was really the best kind of way for me and may heaven help me in the process!!! 

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; 

true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

- Ernest Hemingway

A Jumble of Thoughts

Been out of the radar for a while 'coz been busy with work and also other stuff. I have so many things to talk about but it's hard to separate them in specific posts, so I'm just gonna ramble on in this post ha ha ha ha...

1. We've booked the plane tickets to go back to Indo this autumn. The only problem is that I still don't know for sure yet if I'm gonna get the extra holiday weeks that I've asked at work or not, but I pray and hope that they'll give me the extra time off (there've been some complications at work concerning summer holiday so we get news about it really late). We didn't want to wait too long to book the tickets for fear that the ticket prices would go up, esp. 'coz we're leaving together. *cross my fingers*

Can't wait to meet my family and eat all the glorious food in Indo!!!!!! :-D :-D :-D (I can't jump up and down in joy fully yet until I get news about the headquarter's approval on my extra weeks off, but I'm EXCITED already!!!)

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2. Yesterday got news that my FIL has got a place in the old people's home, so he can be transferred there soon from the hospital. His condition changes every day. Sometimes his memory and physical condition look better one day, but the next day they become worse.

The point is that MIL can't take care of him anymore at home 'coz now they need two people to help him walk. MIL says that it's really hard to let go 'coz she really wants to take care of him at home, so keep on praying for MIL for peace of mind and comfort, please...THANKS!!!

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3. Humans are really interesting. After talking to some people, I realized that some people may not ever be angry at God no matter what happens to them - instead they feel guilty if something wrong happens 'coz they think that they've done something to deserve it.

Some others may not feel angry at God ever 'coz they feel that it's "inappropriate".

Some others may feel angry at God without any reservation. Though they may feel guilt, too, but the guilt vanishes more quickly than the anger.

I wonder how different personality types and upbringing affect these different emotional responses. :-)))

4. I'm still surprised that even yesterday one customer still asked me where I had been. I think it's probably 'coz we hadn't been in the same place at the same time after my Budapest holiday (maybe I was in the office when he came by the store or something like that). He said he was wondering if I had gone back home to Indo, but I said I'd only go back there in autumn.

It's REALLY heartwarming to know that my existence there was "missed" and I TRULY appreciate their saying it to me directly. :-D

5. Just wanna share some C.S. Lewis quotes:

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."

"Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

3BT: January 18, 2008

1. Sending a package for my family to my friend in Germany. I also slipped a small souvenir for her, made in Finland. Hope she likes it he he he he...

2. Finding out that I could send the package cheaper by sending it as a maxi letter. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!!! I saved €20 that way!!!!!!!!!!!

3. The very informative woman who works at the post office. Actually she's one of MC's good friends in Finland. She speaks good English, too. YAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!

4. Getting my new English Bible from the post office (I left my English Bible in Indo and brought my Indonesian one), along with C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed" that I ordered from the International Church in Helsinki.

5. Giggling uncontrollably when hubby made SUCH A FUNNY face. He's really a clown!!! I couldn't believe he could show such a funny face. Even now while typing and remembering it, I want to burst out laughing HI HI HI HI HI HI...CHEERS to being forever young since I have to live with his sense of humour HI HI HI HI HI HI...

6. Finding plums on sale. Believe it or not, I'd NEVER bought fresh plums before in my life and today was the first time I found them on sale. LUCKY ME!!! ;-D

7. It's Friday. ;-D

8. Hearing birds chirping while walking to the post office this morning. Mmmmm...SO beautiful! ;-D

***** I wrote the above list before I heard the news about my uncle. Even though today I heard that my uncle was dead, it reminds me that death is what makes life SO precious. Life's so fragile, yet precious...........

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"Death is psychologically as important as birth. Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose." - Carl Jung

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." - Marcus Aurelius

"It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.'' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter." - C.S. Lewis

"Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind." - C.S. Lewis

"Life is but a brief moment. The years go by quickly and old age arrives suddenly before we have an inkling. People desire so many things and waste their days in vain. Some yearn for gold, others for power, yet others for glory and a higher station. But when death's moment nears and they look back at their lives they've lived, they realise they've been happy only during those moments when they've loved." - Borje Vahamaki

Quotes taken from here.

What About My Birthday?

Inspired by the Birthday Meme I read in Mother Hen's blog, I decided to write this one though nobody tagged me he he he...

My birthday is November 29.

Here are a list of things I found through Wikipedia when I wrote my birth date.

Three events:

1. 1944 - The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.
2. 1945 - The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia declared.
3. 1975 - The name "Micro-soft" (for "microcomputer software") is first used in a letter from Bill Gates to Paul Allen.

Two births:

1. 1831 - Louisa May Alcott, American novelist (d. 1888)
2. 1898 - C. S. Lewis, Irish writer (d. 1963)

One holiday:

1. Albania - Liberation Day (Dita e Çlirimit)

C.S. Lewis Quotations

Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.
- C.S. Lewis. ---> clickable link of the site where I found it.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
- C.S. Lewis.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.
- C.S. Lewis.

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself. – The Problem of Pain
- C.S. Lewis.

“You will never know how much you believe something until it is a matter of life and death.” “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.” – God in the Dock, page 52.
- C.S. Lewis.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. – Mere Christianity, pages 40-41.
- C.S. Lewis.

I would LOVE to read his book: Four Loves. This is the excerpt of what one reviewer said about that particular book:
One basic principle of Lewis's work is the distinction between Need-love and Gift-love. The Need-love has to do, for Lewis, with "a craving to be loved," which is akin to a child's longing for the love of his parents'. Instead of disparaging this type of love as wholely selfish, Lewis describes how this type of love, while limited, is "the accurate reflection in consciousness of our actual nature." Lewis writes that "we need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves." Lewis acknowledges the human condition sympathetically. Gift-love, by contrast, has its ultimate expression in Christ's death on the cross. This is an active, selfless love. Lewis characterizes Gift-love in its ordinary expression as "that love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing."
- vabrookreader "Jeff Hotz"