Just Thoughts and Nothing Else

Pride is a feeling sometimes of great accomplishments, sometimes it's of others that you know and their accomplishments,sometimes it's of disappointments of your life or of others in your life that have disappointed you and hurt your pride and took away the pride you felt about certain situations.

Whatever the situation or emotion that you feel when you are prideful, is individualized each and every time you feel it.

When your children are small and you teach them something you start to say things like show daddy what you can do. The child does that special feat for the day and your heart bursts with pride not only for the child's accomplishment, but also for yourself that you taught your child that special thing!
You child goes off to school and comes home with a great report card and gets praise beyond what you might have expected and again you are so proud of him/her because of it and even more so you are proud that they are your child and that somehow you might have had something to do with their accomplishments that made them get such a good report card.
Off to high school and your child is suddenly so popular, or such a star in sports, or an honor student and again you are not only proud that your now young adult is doing so well, but because again you are proud of the job you have done thus far at raising him/her and giving them the tools needed to be a better person on so many levels.
Off to college and again he/she is excelling, getting great grades, not causing trouble and you boast to your friends how proud you are of them! But you are also feeling the great pride of knowing you may have contributed to the overall wonderful person they are becoming.
Getting married, having children and you are so proud of the husband/wife they are, the mother/father they are and again you feel great pride in their success at life in general.
Then there is the different kind of pride that gets in the way of you living your life, staying in contact with a child just because they've disappointed you in some way throughout their lives, they weren't exactly what you had hoped for and not only have you made the child feel as if they were not worthy of your praise for at least some of the things they've accomplished, but they feel as if you've never been proud of them because from the very first disappointment you withdrew from them and didn't praise them like you should have for even the small things.
Now they are all grown up and PRIDE gets in the way of your own need to feel your childs love and closeness again and you suddenly wonder why is this? Why has my child turned away from me, why do I never hear from them, what was it I've done that made them turn away, keep away, stay away????? "Why don't they ever call me?"
Every person in life needs to be proud of even the little things in life that they are able to accomplish. Every single person needs to understand that maybe they don't make as much money as maybe one of their siblings or as a friend of theirs does. Maybe someone else that they know has accomplished more than they could ever dream of accomplishing, but that they themselves always seem to make poor judgments or wrong choices and they think that the whole world is against them. They even lose pride in themselves! They don't care how they dress, act, or even talk anymore because they just don't matter to anyone including themselves!

So as a parent who probably has been guilty of a couple of the un-prideful moments in my child's life, I say "I'm sorry" I will make no excuses for something I may not have been taught to do, but I was always proud as I can be for my children and all they are able to accomplish in life. My moments may not have been too many in my life, because they all still talk to me and they don't stay away, so for that I am thankful, each and every day of my life!

But for others who have let their children slip away because of some foolish pride, or you have lost the love of your life because of some foolish pride, I say go out and make amends, get out there and tell them you love them and that you were always proud of them in every way. You never wanted them to feel that you didn't care, nor that you were not proud, but that YOU JUST DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING!
Don't waste any more time in doing this because of your foolish pride, because waiting for tomorrow is not an option and you may never get another chance!
Because tomorrow is upon us and there's no time like the Present to turn things around!!!