Pride Cometh Before the Fall

It turns out that the Biblical proverb “pride cometh before the fall” can be understood quite literally. You can be walking down Excelsior Boulevard on the way back from the wine store cradling a chardonnay and a sauvignon blanc in a brown paper bag, not a care in the world. The next thing you know you find yourself face down with your nose scraping the sidewalk. I won’t go into the details because I really don’t want to be that person…the one who can’t think of anything better to talk about. But let’s just say I met some very kind urgent care personnel and leave it at that. I’m partial to the young men who become nurses and medical technicians. These are some of the gentlest men on the planet. They don’t ignore you. They don’t deliver information at breakneck speed. They try to communicate with you, communication being the heart of caregiving. Engaging with these people was one positive outcome. The other blessing was getting the results of the CT scan of the head which indicated that my brain looked pretty much like you’d expect a seventy-seven year old brain to look. That is to say, it resembled a 1989 Honda Civic with some rust and a dent in the fender, but otherwise a good, reliable vehicle. I found it extremely reassuring that there was no real damage, but also that I’m looking my age inside my head. I still delight in the occasional flattery of the “you can’t possibly have great-grandchildren” variety. But the fact that I looked my age on the CT scan explains all the forgetting. Inside my head, there’s no expectation of glamor. There is, baruch-ha-Shem, nothing wrong with me. I’m just aging. Aging is not a disease.

Photo by Eduardo Barrios on Unsplash

Now pride is a wiggly concept. It is the rallying cry of people who have been economically and socially disenfranchised. At the same time in theology, pride is considered the root source of the other six sins. Let’s set aside for the moment the problematic implications of the word sin and just focus on pride. If I’m greedy and take something that is not mine, pride tells me that my desire for that thing is more important than the fact that I’m stealing it from someone else. This applies whether it’s a wallet or a car or another person’s partner or the labor of the people who work for me. I steal because I’m only interested in my own gain, my own pleasure. If I’m angry and refuse to consider the other person’s perspective, it’s pride that says that my way is the only way to think about an issue whether it’s where to go for dinner or where to draw a line in the sand. Similarly, if I’m too deluded to notice that I’ve gotten older and can’t get on the escalator with multiple bags and coats, it’s pride that gets in my way. It’s pride that looks in the mirror and refuses to see an older person, refuses to take my age into account. I’m not talking about decrepitude here. I’m talking about looking reality in the eye wearing glasses of adequate magnification.

People resent aging. They experience painful losses. Not just the loss of beloved friends and family, but the loss of identity and their own capacity to be in the world they way they’ve always been. They miss the action, the tennis game back and forth, the spin around the bar stool. I’m sometimes on top it, but not always inoculated against this feeling. Recently in Berkeley, I tried to dance the night away with a house full of fiftysomethings. Not kids, mind you, but also not people of my vintage, weaned on my music. Stevie and Smokey. I felt like the whole party had passed me by. It gave me the queasy feeling of finding myself caring about something that I was embarrassed to care about, that didn’t add up to much. But when I look back on my writing about aging over the last five years or so, it all seems to be coming from the same direction. I have not been a person who bemoans her loss of strength or stamina or even appearance. I have been a person who sometimes begrudges the parade, the brass band marching up the street without her. It’s a story from junior high school on repeat….but with a difference. Back then, when we moved through the city in packs, commandeering subway cars, I always felt alone. Now that a cloud of quiet envelops me, I no longer feel that way. I am mindful of being included in an anthology of stories about lives spooling out. The stories are intershelved with prayerbooks, medical charts, scripture and photograph albums. They are a revelation.

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Our new feature, Many Voices, will appear on the last Sunday of each month and will feature contributions from the community of paid subscribers. In April, Many Voices will welcome psychotherapist and spiritual teacher, Sharon Coleman, on “Boredom and the Fertile Void.” Please honor us by sending your thoughts and your writing.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.