Exploration

Exploration 2
Quiet Pride

Psychotherapist John Welwood teaches his clients how to "be" with themselves. He recalled a man who was simply unable to let himself feel good.¹⁷ We like to be with people who help us value ourselves, but we may not have thought about our own company in this way. How are we with ourselves? Do we help ourselves feel good?

Mark Twain wrote that we cannot be comfortable without our own approval, and yet this may be harder to get than the approval of others. In their book, The Inner Enemy, George Bach and Laura Torbet write that many of us have within a critical, hurtful voice that asks accusingly, "Who do you think you are, walking upright, trying to be successful, to be content, to be loved and lovable, trying to have a good time? You've got a lot of nerve. I'll show you."¹⁸

We need to learn -- if we haven't already -- to be our own ally and friend. We need to be at peace with ourselves, to be good to ourselves, to accept -- and more than that -- to prize ourselves. Each of us needs to have a quiet pride in who we are. Not a noisy "pride" that needs to announce itself to the world. Not an embarrassed "pride" that is self-conscious and disconcerted. Neither of those is truly pride. Just a simple, confident, quiet pride.

Sometimes our sense of pride will be enhanced by our successes; these may be large or small, known to everyone or perhaps only to ourselves. At other times, we will find reason for pride in our failures; it will come from knowing we tried or fought a good fight or weren't kept down by defeat. We come to realize that sometimes in order to succeed, we must fail; we learn through our failures how to succeed.

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