PRIDE

Am I proud? Yes.

It will also depend on what we are talking about. See when I think about pride, I remember my religion classes in the lower sixth science class of Bishop Rogan Minor Seminary. You see 'pride' is one of the seven deadly sins of the Roman Catholic Church. I remember all the arguments I had with my spiritual director, Fr. Basile Sede (I hope he is reading). To cut the whole argument short I concluded that depending on what you are viewed as pride can be a good thing or a very bad thing. Hence mathematically your reputation is directly proportional to the way your pride is viewed: (+ve/-ve). In this post based on which reputation of me you have then you might conclude either way. Now the humble approach is what society or people will expect from us. That is why Humility is the direct opposite to pride according to the Roman Catholic doctrine, while pride is a deadly sin; humility is one of the heavenly virtues. We all came from different backgrounds and based on inexplicable factors we are certainly different. I think character traits like arrogance, confidence, ego might get intertwined with being proud but for those who can single them out, being proud is unique and can occur independent of these other factors. Reputation is a very delicate subject and since it is an opinion it will differ from one point of view to the other, hence we cannot really talk about reputation as a standalone as it is more complex to me than pride.

Your pride should only come from your potential, your ability to conquer any circumstance and nothing else! not your parent's wealth, not your past accomplishments, nothing but your potential, knowing who you are, what you can achieve...when I talk about being proud am implying solely on what I know am worth and can achieve in my life, PERSONAL PRIDE, jay says “ put me anywhere in God’s green earth and I’ll triple my worth” and yes I get obsessed with myself when I can see my potentials and possibilities, and since I spent a lot of time crafting and thinking about them, my pride easily goes into arrogance, disrespect, or being rude. The truth is when my pride goes down this negative path I feel pathetic and I always make efforts to change lanes; Now that am a little older, (cause I cannot think of a time when I did not believe in my potentials) am a little more prudent and have learned to listen and make constructive criticisms and also accept them. Imagine that am in a small village in Africa thinking I can make it regardless of my surroundings, then how will I feel when placed in the motherland of opportunities USA! From that perspective.....come on now sky should be the limit.

We sometimes coadunate pride with stubbornness the reason being that most people who are proud rarely listen to advice. That might be true; see in my household my sisters consider me to be very stubborn sometimes because there are certain decisions I will not let my family make for me. my thinking at the time really comes from my pride, even though I know these people are telling me these things out of love, I have enough confidence on my ability to pull through this alone. My favorite rapper JAY-Z says and I quote;

"I ain't never ran, never will
I never asked for nothin I don't demand of myself
Honesty, loyalty, friends and then wealth
I tell you what else
I tighten my belt 'fore I beg for help
Foolish pride is what held me together through the years
I can't say I've never knelt before God and asked for better cards at times to no avail
But I never sat back feelin sorry for myself
If you don't give me heaven I'll raise hell'
Til it's heaven"

Look when you make your own decisions based on your potentials either way that decision goes it is a win-win for you. The worst thing that can happen is failure but if you fail because of a decision that you made, it would be way easier to pull yourself up and continue. If you doubt you potential and listen to some other person and you fail, you will somehow blame that person for your failure and your journey to recovery will be much harder.

Our reputations should be based on facts to me, like if you get into an argument about who is the best in the NBA, Kobe or Lebron? I think Kobe is the best based on facts/statistics but Kobe's reputation will make Lebron win that argument 6 out of 1o times. So if you think am proud in a negative way or pretentious, why don't you proof me otherwise? Like that is my take on all this reputation and pride argument. We can all be proud or claim to be what we are not, but if you’re running your car on empty gas soon it will stop and everybody will know you’re a fake, a poser. The pride you portrayed will turn into your demise! Let’s not get this twisted before I continue I want to make it absolutely clear that recognizing another person's accomplishment is one of my greatest joy. If I have ever been a 'hater' then I was probably misquoted or we don't see eye to eye in the first place. No apologies! So if I say am proud and based on the reputation you have of me, it bothers you then you will have to prove to me am not who I say I am. We all know reputation builds on gossip; I cannot control gossips, so I don't worry about gossipers, show me the facts and I will drop my pride.

It always becomes clear to me when I see a more successful person where my pride came from. To be honest with you the first thing that cross my mind is ' wow he/she is great or accomplished, now let see how he/she got there and do better' so I approach that person with all the respect that he/she deserves with the intention of learning how they did it and doing better. I think we must accept that no matter what you can accomplish somebody else might do the same or better, and there will be people who will always have something you cannot achieve. I live and believe this so it is a total waste of energy to envy a more successful person.

I know the jury out there will disagree with my take on pride and just like the church paint it as devilish trait. But am letting you know in this blog: please people live a proud life, please live a very proud life. See you do not understand how hard it is to live a proud life, it means you must be at the top of your ability at all times because everybody is waiting for you to fail, but see your pride will always keep you on top. wake up in the morning look yourself in the mirror and tell that figure in the mirror that " Am the best in what I do, I will be great today, I will be awesome' live your life like this and I guarantee you all those big obstacles you use to wonder how to deal with, they will reappear with solutions on how to deal with them and crush them. Live a proud life; yes you are from Africa so what? Show them that African values are the best by being the best! No matter your religion, race or circumstances am begging you to live a very very very PROUD LIFE. Those who are your doubters now will reconcile with you later when you are at the top you will see!

I am going to let it breathe for a little bit here, lol

THANKS FOR READING MY BLOG, I love y'all

WHERE AM FROM

By now it is clear that I hail from the motherland AFRICA.

I was born in Buea, Cameroon. Cameroon lies in western central Africa, it shares borders with Nigeria, Chad and the Central African Republic. If you really want to know more about my country follow this blog they do an extraordinary job everyday with their daily postings http://www.chopachoplive.com/. I want to blog about where am from because I feel like before continuing this blog, any postings you read on this blog about my thoughts definitely came from this place, our growth and experience shapes our views about things and eventually family (next post) and friends carry us through till the end. Obviously hailing from a developing country has its obstacles. I got to admit that I cannot remember much of the negative things that happen in my childhood but I can definitely remember the glorious things. Since I can compare my surroundings back then to what I see now in the US, I can make comparisons to highlight the differences.

My neighborhood was always busy as I remember; on any given day there were lots of children playing around with only their panties (me included). Mothers will yelled at the top of their lungs for those who had not taken a shower, did not wash the plates or complete their household chores. those days if you wanted to be popular you had to be great in a game we called "stinking'; we used beer covers as soccer players and the rubber tops of battery as a controller, then play real soccer games with this beer covers. I have to say I was pretty good at this game. We also had fishing trips where we used a live worm as the bait to capture the fishes, if you caught the biggest fish, that day you were king, I cannot remember why , but like we had food at our various houses but that particular fish just became the greatest and most tasteful pabulum(lol Birocol) that day just like a filet mignon! Talking about this I remember rallying with my friends to go hunting in the local forests for meat. We went hunting into the most dangerous forests (way back after the CDC plantations) with no guns, just a cutlass and three dogs. After juxtaposing positions with the dogs inside the thick forest for over 6 hours we will end up with some very strange animals, I cannot even remember the English equivalent of some of their names (mole maybe).

In Africa they say a child is raised by a village that is absolutely true. My mother left Cameroon when I was five to go for further studies abroad and came back after six years, the most I saw of her was during Christmas holidays. My father did the best job any dad will do in that position but I felt like I had too many mothers during this period, these women including my eldest sister, filled that void and shielded me from the emptiness of not having my mother growing up. When my dad would come back from work he need not yelled out where I was, he just needed to check with these ladies and am found. It will make better sense if you consider that I was the baby of my household, it irks me to think people always associate last children to be their mother's pet. My mother eventually came back and I feel like she has definitely made up for those years with all the love she has showered for me so far.

There is this concept of lost identity when we (foreigners) come to the USA or other developed or western countries. Lost identity in the sense that we tend to forget where we came from and try to adopt another personality. I really cannot divulged into what Darwin's teachings or biological teachings are on evolution, but I think neglecting where you from is a fundamental failure in anyone's personality. Out here there are so many things we need to learn all positive, some will say what do you consider positive? There is just so much the western world has for us to learn but to be able to capitalize in these good fortunes isolating your fundamentals will take you further. I will say to me trying to 'rap' or speak like an African American is more a joke to yourself than to the people laughing at you. I will go as far as claiming it is a self esteem issue, because if your self esteem is intact why will you wanna be different? This is more of another topic I might let it breathe here, I really hate to see us (foreigners) especially Africans soaked in such mannerisms.

Generally I feel like most foreigners make use of the opportunities they are given in these developed parts of the world because of where they are from. I also think we (foreigners) might see these westerners neglect or feel like they are wasting some of the things we consider golden opportunities but to really understand how they look at these things we need to rewind and think back about how we looked at certain things back home. Yes comparatively it isn't of the same magnitude, well if it were, we wouldn't be here. I do not think they take it for granted but they are looking at something more important than we will think. I can attribute every success and failure in my life to where I came from but then again that wouldn't be completely true as we all know several other things played a role. I am so proud of my origins as a place and I will always look forward of going back home no matter how much I can accomplish here. I miss it every day and I am reminded of it every barrier I cross.

Thanks for sharing with me.