The last word

Pride begins where vanity ends. John Climacus describes it in order: its middle is contempt for one’s neighbour, boasting of one’s own labours and hatred of reproof, and its end is rejecting all help and relying only on one’s own strength. An elder told him: if there are twelve passions, pride alone can take the place of the other eleven.

Where a fall has happened, pride had settled in beforehand.

Today you recognise pride when “I was wrong” and “I don’t know” are hard to say. You take reproof not as advice, but as an attack. You look down on those who know or have less. At home you want the last word in every decision. And you think you achieved everything by yourself.

John tells of an elder who counselled a proud brother, and the brother answered: forgive me, father, I am not proud. The elder said there was no stronger proof of pride. So the first step is not denial, but accepting reproof. When someone corrects you, do not answer at once. Say “thank you, I’ll think about it”, and really think about it.

The second step is to see what is truly yours. John says, with a little irony, that you may take pride only in the virtues you acquired before you were born, because everything else, even mind and body, is a gift. Write down what you have achieved, and next to each item note who helped you in it: parents, teachers, your wife, circumstances. Compare yourself with the great who came before you, not with the weaker, because pride grows when you measure yourself against those beneath you. At least now and then, do a job you usually leave to others, and not so that you are seen. And every evening say honestly: here I went wrong. John says this is the one thing pride and vanity cannot attack.

The traps are most dangerous precisely when you are making progress. Gratitude as a mask: giving thanks that you are better than others is not gratitude, but a Pharisee’s prayer. The belief that you are free of passions: John says most of the proud deceive themselves with exactly this until death. And spiritual pride, which is closest just when you are climbing. This passion not only keeps you from advancing, it throws you down from the height you have reached. Whoever reads this register should know that this applies to reading, too.

The sign that you have climbed: you can say “I was wrong” and “I don’t know” without a sense of defeat, and you rejoice sincerely at another’s success. A humble man, John says, does not defend himself harshly.

The question remains: why is a proud man tormented most by thoughts he did not invite?

N. Ž.