Avoiding the whole ‘Pride comes before a fall’ thing

Esther 6 is pure gold. A wonderfully engaging story with such a clever twist that made me chuckle. Truly comical and yet with murderous thoughts at its core. Worthy of a sitcom or a scene in a pantomime. So here it is in its entirety for you to enjoy.

That night the king couldn’t sleep. He ordered the record book, the day-by-day journal of events, to be brought and read to him. They came across the story there about the time that Mordecai had exposed the plot of Bigthana and Teresh—the two royal eunuchs who guarded the entrance and who had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.

The king asked, “What great honour was given to Mordecai for this?”

“Nothing,” replied the king’s servants who were in attendance. “Nothing has been done for him.”

The king said, “Is there anybody out in the court?”

Now Haman had just come into the outer court of the king’s palace to talk to the king about hanging Mordecai on the gallows he had built for him.

The king’s servants said, “Haman is out there, waiting in the court.”

“Bring him in,” said the king.

When Haman entered, the king said, “What would be appropriate for the man the king especially wants to honour?”

Haman thought to himself, “He must be talking about honouring me—who else?” So he answered the king, “For the man the king delights to honour, do this: Bring a royal robe that the king has worn and a horse the king has ridden, one with a royal crown on its head. Then give the robe and the horse to one of the king’s most noble princes. Have him robe the man whom the king especially wants to honour; have the prince lead him on horseback through the city square, proclaiming before him, ‘This is what is done for the man whom the king especially wants to honour!’”

“Go and do it,” the king said to Haman. “Don’t waste another minute. Take the robe and horse and do what you have proposed to Mordecai the Jew who sits at the King’s Gate. Don’t leave out a single detail of your plan.”

So Haman took the robe and horse; he robed Mordecai and led him through the city square, proclaiming before him, “This is what is done for the man whom the king especially wants to honour!”

Then Mordecai returned to the King’s Gate, but Haman fled to his house, thoroughly mortified, hiding his face. When Haman had finished telling his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had happened to him, his knowledgeable friends who were there and his wife Zeresh said, “If this Mordecai is in fact a Jew, your bad luck has only begun. You don’t stand a chance against him—you’re as good as ruined.”

While they were still talking, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman off to the dinner that Esther had prepared.    Esther 6

I hope you enjoyed that. Did you feel an inkling of sympathy for Haman by the end? Were you beginning to feel a little sorry for him? What a complete fool! Blinded by his own success into thinking that the king could only be referring to him. Thinking he was planning an honourable parade for himself when it ended up being for the one man who refused to respect him. With him being the one to lead Mordecai through the streets shouting his praises. No wonder he felt thoroughly mortified. After all he had said about Mordecai and had planned for him.

A great example of ‘Pride comes before a fall’, don’t you think? That proverb that basically says ‘if you’re too conceited or self-important, something will happen to make you look foolish.’ We see it all the time. Someone is given some responsibility and power and is made to feel important and ‘honoured’ by the leader. They believe the positive things that are being said about them and fall into the trap of feeling superior. They then forget how to treat other people around them with respect and start to lord it over them. They become so self-confident that they become blind to who they really are, flaws and all. They think that only their opinion matters. They get cross when someone questions their authority. They try to silence their critics. And then something happens to expose them for their foolishness. They fall off the pedestal they should never have been put on in the first place.

This whole thing really fascinates me. Well, not so much the consequences of pride, but what we conceive as the opposite. How to avoid it. Because I don’t believe the opposite of pride is a total lack of self-belief. Self-effacement. Putting yourself down all the time. The inability to accept praise without undermining it.

There must be a way to own and accept and celebrate the gifts we have been given without it going to our heads and warping our thinking. There must be a way of feeling a certain pride in our achievements without becoming superior. There must be a way of saying ‘I am a dancer’ or ‘I am a writer’ or ‘I am a photographer’ without feeling the need to qualify it with ‘but I’m not that good’; ‘but I’ve never been published’; ‘but it’s just a hobby’.

You don’t need to put yourself down all the time. Just as you don’t need to big yourself up. Just be real. Be who you are – that unique mix of successes and failures and strengths and weaknesses. And recognise that everyone else is a unique mix of successes and failures and strengths and weaknesses too. Accept the praise when you get it right. Accept the criticism when you get it wrong. Simple.

For me, it’s about keeping in mind that I am capable of getting it wrong on a regular basis; that wisdom can come from the most surprising of sources; that I am learning every single day; that life is a journey and I will never arrive; that there will be moments of success alongside moments of failure.

No one should ever be put on a pedestal and expect to stay there. An athlete has their moment of celebration on a podium and then gets right down and starts training again. Having your moment of honour and glory and recognition and celebration is fine. Mordecai had his and then went straight back to take up his position at the king’s gate. I guess at work, being picked to go to America was that for me. It made me special for a while. But that moment has passed. Now I have to get back into my position and get on with my work faithfully and diligently. And with writing this blog, last Saturday we had 500 readers. It was exciting and humbling. And then today we will have probably about 30 – back to business as usual.

We can’t stop other people putting us on a pedestal, but we can make sure it doesn’t go to our heads, if and when it happens. We can keep it real. We can surround ourselves with people who keep it real.

Own and accept your gifts – but never fall into believing that they make you better than anyone else.