If you want to know why we are in the mess we are in, the lack of Pride

Pride used to be something that we all felt when we accomplished a goal that we set for ourselves and the majority of the time it was not a goal for all to see or hear about.  That is the major difference between pride and arrogance.  Pride makes you smile from the inside as you recount accomplishing that goal while arrogance makes you smile only when someone sees and comments when you have accomplished something.  We used to take pride in mostly everything we did, which elevated our attention to detail and level of work but today that sense of pride does not exist and we simply only do enough to get by.

There used to be a time when we sought to do a better job than we did yesterday not for the sake of the company but for the sake of ourselves.  Coming home at the end of a hard day used to make us walk taller and broader but now coming home after a hard day’s work means that you had to put up with more drama than you did yesterday.  You come home angry and upset, not at what anyone at home has done but simply because you are disappointed in not feeling like you accomplished something and now the target of this frustration are those whom you claim to love and cherish.  You know that they do not deserve it but you still take aim because they appear to be the only ones you feel comfortable with displaying your anger to.

We see this more evident in this current election cycle where those who say that they take pride in their service to this nation is now willing to turn that nation over to a reality TV star who has no true idea what that red, white and blue stands for.  Who proudly claims to care for no one and nothing but himself, where pride in action is all about the money he made for himself and never the help he has given to those with lesser resources.   We see this is those who claim that the opposition to this man is better but honestly they know we could have done better than choosing her to lead but in this current climate where we do not take pride in anything we disclose to others, we could care less.  Some say that he is better than she and the things he says will never happen because someone will stop him.  So false and history tells us that if this is what we believe then we are fooling ourselves.  Wars were started by lies and that war still continues today, no one stopped him.  State governments are passing laws that no longer consider the people but person who contributed more and will let you ride on their private jet and no one stopped them.

Our military used to show pride in their uniforms but now we see people wearing them disrespectfully or at rallies where only the few is considered important instead of the many.  Our military used to be ambassadors to other countries and would truly change the minds of those countries just by the way they conducted themselves while there.  This was not difficult because you were fighting a war, you were still courteous to people, helped the locals when you could and reached our hand to any of them that needed it.    These actions made those who saw it dream of the day that they could be just like us and risk their lives to cross whatever border to get to where we are so that they can begin that change.

We used to take pride in what was made here but those with the authority to move all made products to another country just for the sake of money and that Made in the USA stamp does not appear except on the weapons we ship.  We used to take pride in how this country was viewed by all other countries but now we could care less.  We used to take pride in being a dad, a mom, a grandparent, a friend or family now we look for ways to exploit those closest to us and distance ourselves from those who refuse to think or act like us.  What happened to this pride, we allowed it to be sucked up by greed, arrogance and selfishness.  We allowed it to be covered over and disguised as something else to ease our fears and we still allow it to be masked over because we are too afraid to remove our own masks.  We lost this sense of pride simply because we lost that sense of pride each of us used to have in ourselves.