River came home with a sticker on his school shirt yesterday, saying that his teacher was really proud of him. So I told him that I was proud of him too. It’s nice: he was pleased.
Pride is one of the Social Currencies, and when I carried out research into how we ‘spend’ this currency, I was a little surprised to discover that the first place that people find pride is typically through the achievements of someone in their trusted network. Only in second or third place did I usually see pride located primarily in our personal achievements.
It makes sense: we are connected to these people, we are invested in them, and hence pride is a ‘judgement’ we apply when we see their success. The sticker is an artefact, and artefacts are useful when we seek to build culture. Artefacts, with the associated rituals of gifting, are very natural human things.
Use your sixty seconds today to consider where you have found pride: today, this week, this month, or was it longer ago?
Where did you find it, and how did you express it?
What did it give you, or cost you?
With typical reserve, we can sometimes feel pride but not express it to others, despite that fact that we understand it to be a connective feature of our broader social context.
