Pride and prejudice

THAT'S a title of a book. A nice little book that managed to make a big change in my life.

It was many years ago. I was still in high school then. I was down in bed with flu, feeling dead bored and thoroughly rotten. I was craving for some rescue, which I could not define, but no one seemed to have caught hold of my need, even if many were at my side trying to give me comfort. My real SOS was not heard.

Someone lent me that book. I don't remember now who he was. He or she must have been a friend who played as my angel at the time.

The miracle was that I read it. In fact, when I started reading it, I could not put it down until I finished it--devoured it, might have been the better expression. Yes, I skipped a meal just for it.

I had never read a whole book or novel before that. This must have been because I never saw my father, my idol, waste his time reading novels. He had many other more important things to do. Funny, but I felt exactly the same!

Besides, the only ones who encouraged me to read were my teachers. I liked them, of course. But at the back of my mind I always considered them as nice but not very realistic. So I was civil to them, but I kept my distance and was fiercely, if secretly, choosy as to what I would get from them.

Of course, I too had my share of laziness and the inclination to do only the easy things. I didn't want to be told anything, much less to be demanded on. I would do something only when I liked it. Period. My parents must have suffered. Or were amused. Sometimes they looked that way.

"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen changed all that. I was fascinated by the love story, of course. Even titillated. But it was the subtle workings of pride and its relation to prejudice masterfully played out in that novel that got me hooked to it.

I emerged from that sickness not only feeling very well but also convinced I entered into a new world of a richer and deeper reality. The book helped crystallize the vague and hazy thoughts and insights that I had been having for sometime then. Perhaps they were the pangs of my conscience.

Soon after that I discovered the gospels, then some spiritual books, and the reality opened to me by "Pride and Prejudice" became even clearer and more exhilarating. Or should it be scarier and more frightening?

That's because that's when I became more aware of how evil and wicked pride is! And the worst part of it is that I realized I had many of its symptoms. So the fight was on. I became extremely sensitive to its manifestations whenever they appeared in me and in others.

Yes, pride is very ugly and very tricky. It can appear as the most desirable thing when in fact it is the most harmful element one can have in his system. It can easily assume the guise of righteousness and even of holiness to strengthen its hold in an individual.

It's truly a terrible thing. It can make one blind even when he can avail of all the light there is. It leads one to create a world of darkness even in the midst of light. With it, one learns the arts of being sly, deceitful, hypocritical, malicious.

It abuses freedom and exploits whatever pieces of truth one may have in his possession. They are exploited to uphold one's own interests, not God's, much less, anybody else's.

It distorts and disfigures reality. It perverts people and things. It can so deform conscience that one may not even be able anymore to know he is proud. It's usually another person who discovers one's pride. And it usually requires some extraordinary means to jolt one from it.

It is insidious and vicious. It attacks all aspects of man -- his mind, will, desires, feelings, etc. It knows how to metamorphose continually to avoid detection. It's an expert in disguising and camouflaging. It knows how to take advantage of anything.

In this sense, other sins are much better. Sensuality, no matter how ugly and dirty, can easily be discovered. Same with gluttony and avarice and envy, etc. But pride? It can even appear as an expression of piety.

It's so sticky and persistent that someone said it only would leave a person 24 hours after his death. It comes precisely at the moment we, by intention or neglect, dare to live far from God. And that's a common phenomenon, sad to say.

So in this "moro-moro" (farce) we are having at the moment, starred by politicians who are acting like clowns and buffoons and trying their best to turn us to be like them, we have a good material to study the twisted workings of pride.

That's why we have to pray hard and offer abundant sacrifices for the conversion of the people concerned. They are not doing things for God, nor for the common good. With prayers, we can still dare to hope for conversion, and hope to remove the clutch of pride over all of us.