Pride makes a person stupid

Whenever a person suffers from pride, he or she becomes stupid too. I am a living example of such stupidity. In the mid sixties when colonial minded foreigners invited me to join their club which bore a sign board at the entrance, “Dogs are not allowed to enter”, I thought my status had risen. I thought I had become high class like them. This is because I had earlier been brought up believing that the foreigners I knew at that time were super human beings and therefore high class. However, I wondered that after joining the club, the same club members still entered club premises with dogs regardless of the warning at the entrance. When I realised that the dogs they meant were not real dogs but fellow Africans, I quit the club and turned the guns of my pride against the same colonial minded foreigners. At the age of 27, I refused boarding ordinary passenger planes when on business trips in East Africa and chartered small planes. Pride made me regard passenger planes as buses and that I could not travel with relatives of colonial masters on the same planes, because many fellow Africans could not afford. I also reasoned that ordinary passenger planes were not convenient for my business. In those days all air charter fleets were owned by foreigners. Their pilots too were whites, whom I thought it was a good opportunity for me to humiliate them, by making them take me wherever I wanted in East Africa. During the period June 1979 to August 1981, I worked for the Uganda Government and ran successful businesses at the same time that I had transferred from Nairobi, Kenya. Pride made me have my suits dry cleaned in Nairobi by White Rose, my drinks imported and stationery for my businesses, printed in London. Although I had stopped chartering small planes and was in the process of buying one, pride made me delay passenger planes to Entebbe or from Entebbe to Nairobi, for an hour or so, whenever I found myself not through with what I was doing. I could simply call the Airport Airline Manager to wait for me and that was it. Indeed pride is insanity and stupidity. Besides possession of big money at the early stage of my life, impatience with people who are slow in service delivery, including those who do not plan or do not keep time or promises, often met the wrath of my pride. I always failed to tolerate excuses to the extent of refusing to take delayed meals in hotels and the like. I uncompromisingly refused to accept excuses for failing to plan or keep time or for failing to keep promises. I always expected people to inform me in advance whenever they knew they would fail to keep time or promises before due time. I never tolerated or accepted anyone to inform me so when I meet him or her somewhere suddenly. When I realised in 1992 that God hates pride and arrogance (Proverbs 8:13) and that I could not afford continuing demanding high standards of efficiency and effectiveness in people I have not trained or employed, I did away with pride. I also realised from the Scripture that when pride comes, then comes disgrace (Proverbs 11:2). Having lost what I lost in Uganda during the wars, I was not ready for any more disgrace. I was also alarmed to know that pride only brings quarrels (Proverbs 13:10). I chose not to expose myself anymore to quarrels caused by my pride. It was worse to know that pride goes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18). I did not want to continue exposing myself to destruction. It also came to my knowledge that pride can bring me low instead of up (Proverbs 29:23) and that those who walk in pride God will humble like He did to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:37). dalemuta@yahoo.co.uk