The Biggest Danger

"A conceited person never really gets anywhere because he things he is already there." - Hal Roach

In my personal copy of "The Speaker's Quote Book," the expensive one that cost thirty bucks on Amazon and has over five thousand quotes, I found this story, (I'm paraphrasing) on the topic of pride. Two ducks and a frog were great friends and spent a day playing by the pond. When it was time to go home and the ducks were ready to fly, the frog had no way to get home, so the ducks helped him out by carrying a stick between their beaks and carrying the frog on the stick as they flew. They passed a farmer who saw them and said, "That's clever. Whose idea was that?"

"Mine," replied the frog. 

Let's just say he learned the hard way that pride cometh before a fall.

While this story was amusing, it illustrates a true fact about pride. People have told me and I'm sure you've heard them say that they really struggle with self-love. "I just don't do enough loving of myself." Well let me be really blunt and say, that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. No one struggles with loving themselves enough, the problem we all have is that we love ourselves too much! (To be clear, there's such a thing as being too hard on oneself, beating up on someone after doing poorly on a test, etc. But I don't think anyone even in those situations struggles to think highly of themselves in doing so.) One thing I've realized through a move roughly every other year for a long time now, and now taking a class in a high school, is that I am really really small, and there's way too much out there for me to ever be significant. 

One of my absolute favorites was this one from Michelangelo which really goes with this concept, "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that our aim is too low and we reach it." We all like to think we are the best, but it's time to take the attitude that we are not the greatest, we are not the best that there is so much out there that is so much bigger than us and when we humble ourselves then we can discover a fraction of what is out there. 

If there's anything I can say, to my peers and to the world let it be this, you should be satisfied with what you have in terms of possessions, but if you are satisfied with you knowledge, work ethic, and character, you are missing out. There is always, always room to grow, and remember that we aren't as big as we think we are. We must aim higher, and we must always keep going forward, or we risk being stranded at the place where we are in our behavior and mindset, when there is potential to be so much more.