It really depends on how you measure your life. If you believe life is about being smarter, wiser, more experienced, (I would add more right) then, it may not be wrong to think that. However, in my way of thinking, if you think your life is about relationship and righteousness (way different from being more right, as righteousness to me speaks of relationship and more right speaks of comparison/competition), then thoughts like this can be considered counter productive to life.

I recently was in a discussion/problem solving/disagreement with someone dear to me and this person said to me, “Well, Dianne, it is just so obvious.” This statement reminds me much of the above and, in my perception/experience, it puts the person down who disagrees. It doesn’t build relationship, understanding, and joint meaning. It divides.

That is my experience and it may not parallel your discussion here. I think we all have our wisdom, but our measure of comparison is not with each other, but with God’s wisdom that is infinite and unfathomable. We are all leveled before Him. This bigger picture gives us moorings from which humility can reside in our interactions, relationships and disagreements.

Sigh, must get back to cleaning…think of you often and think well of you each time…

I have readily considered Lauren to be a great source of criticism for which I can use to grow. Usually I seek outside opinions of the matter not to contradict or ignore her, but to supplement so I can better see the situation as a whole, since I’m to close to even see the problem at all, and she is sometimes effected (either in my favor or against) in her estimation of a situation. So I post (seemingly) random questions like this and ask for feedback. But I guess some problems are far to close to me to let them get out much…or I’ve taken great care in covering these kinds of things up so that no one knows about them (for one reason or another….I blame living in a glass house, but there are a host of other reasons I could be doing that as well…not the least of which is just being male).

Anyway, thanks Dave for the feedback, and thank-you to my wife who stayed logged in as me on accident.

Is it wrong to think that if it’s true.

In ECE proffessors and adviors hint that you should have no problems getting a job, or they make fun of other engineering programs at other schools, or they just say that you are better than {blank} since you are a U of I engineer. Even when they were telling me I was a bad student they were telling me I should be able to get a good job, or that I will pass even though I failed some classes. They are really really mean though if they think you don’t belong in the department, but if you are in they can be mean, but they still try to tell you that all you have to do is get out and your set.

Things are hard to see up close when they’re large, and obscured or not represented by details; or subtle, and the closeness degrades the perception of the observer (spouse). In the case of something like pride, which most would agree is very easy to see in someone else (if not oneself), then given a baseline perceptivity of your spouse (which we would all agree Lauren has), I would recommend trusting their assessment. Doubly so because it’s harder to see it yourself.

A related example from my own marriage: Monica has long felt (well, since we got married three years ago), and communicated to me, that I am too critical of her. I am, in fact, much more critical of her when we’re in private than I am in public, and much more critical still in my own internal conversation. I have basically disagreed with her, and our discussions of the matter tended to end relatively lamely in disagreeing about the nature of grace, and particularly its relationship to laxness. (Aside: as much of a fan as I am of theologizing, I have to say that marital conflicts that degenerate into primarily theological arguments are, in my experience, often sucky and useless and missing the point.) Only recently, and after having done more damage to our marriage than you might find easy to believe, have I realized that she was right, that I am far too critical of her, not primarily about this or that thing that she does or doesn’t do, but of her, foundationally, i.e. disapproving of her as a person. She tried to say this to me in various ways over the years and basically I wouldn’t hear it. And I wish I had, earlier.

I say this is a related example because the disapproval of her was grounded in my own selfishness, which is closely related to pride, was harder for me to see than for her, and was easy for me to justify. And whether or not this relates: it was destructive in our marriage, my own life, and the lives of those around me.

Not to get all over-the-top on you… mainly I wanna say: I think you should humble yourself before Lauren’s perception of you; it may save you both a lot of grief in the long run. To quote Chesterton yet again, Lauren’s comment above reminded me of this passage from Orthodoxy, ch. 5, where he says “of women, and their strange and strong loyalty”:

Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man’s friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed [belief in/devotion to their husband] are utter cynics in their criticism [of him]… The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

djl

My concern for you is based mostly around how you deal with conflict with other people, and sometimes with me. If someone disagrees with you and won’t change their mind, you have said that they a) aren’t listening b) don’t understand the subject or most commonly c) don’t understand that you are so much smarter/wiser/more experienced than they are and they should really just be quiet and take in your wisdom. This seems like pride to me. Not because you should say that you’re bad at things you’re good at but because you assume that problems you have with other people are entirely caused by the other people’s deficiencies. In this way you place yourself on a higher plane than them, lifting yourself up and putting them down in your mind. This is pride. I don’t believe people outside would know this about you because they haven’t listned to you process through conflict in the same way I have, and they don’t concern themselves with the inner workings of your mind the way I do. If you think I’m way out in left field, ask your parents about it, because they have known you in similarly intimate ways.

I love you, I think you’re amazing. No one could think better of you than I do, I guarantee. I only mentioned this because you asked what you thought was holding you back from doing cool stuff in the church. In my opinion, it is this issue. I give myself permission to be wrong, but it might be worth praying about.

You’re not weird, you’re just realizing that other people aren’t as smart/quick as you are and it’s going to be much easier for you to hurt them because you’re quicker than they are. If you really want to resonate with humiliation, you can pray for it… though really, I’d strongly suggest you figure out how to be humble without such an experience.

Just my 2 cents.

Just going to the U of I in engineering made me more humble, but then you get out and realize that they weren’t kidding when they told you that you would be the shit even with crappy grades. Sometimes I feel dumb for getting bad grades and others I look around at the people in the world and think “how stupid can you all be”

I suspose sooner or later I’ll level somewhere. Either way, I don’t resonate with being humiliated…I seem to learn more humility by screwing other people up, I’m wierd I think.

Hmm…I wonder if my wife is a good person to evaluate my pride issues as well..not because she has pride problems, but because she is too close to me.

Mondays is our guy night…..kinda could end up being about like you described anyway, you should come sometime.

I will say that I really don’t think having a U of I engineering degree is anything to be that proud of. I really don’t think any degree is worth being proud of. It is the learning that you should be proud of, and the things you are using that learning to achieve. I think being proud of titles and pieces of paper is the worst kind, because it is really meaningless.

j