Pride

Thank you to everyone for your wonderful feedback regarding my last post!  I was filled with mixed emotions, mostly a blend of happiness and embarrassment, with a smidgen of pride.

  

Pride as an emotion has pretty negative connotations, but it's because most people think of hubris, which actually refers to being overly prideful and arrogant for no reason (think source of Shakespearean heroes' downfalls).  Pride on the other hand, is a basic human emotion that is even displayed by young children.  It is natural and yet so misunderstood.  Though I know this now, it was not always the case.

Pride is/was a difficult for me to admit.  Growing up,‎ I always felt like pride was only warranted if someone else was proud of me first, or else it'd be called arrogance.  There is definitely some cultural influence, as most Eastern cultures highly value being humble and humility as great virtues.  For me, this meant that I had to do well on an objective measure, such as a test or an exam, and then I'd be praised based on whatever number I achieved.  Although I tried to go along with this game plan, part of me knew it alone would never be enough, and as I got older, I began to see that my own creations, rather than some intangible achievement, was what brings me true happiness.  And sure enough, when I look at what I've created, my photos, my writings, and other artwork (I also draw, maybe I'll share those in a later post), I can't help but smile and in a way that I've only recently understood as pride.

And so, as part of me accepting and acknowledging pride in my work, as well as the noticeable issue with my last, Super-Post, I've added various galleries to this blog to feature my different types of photos.  They are on the top bar for easy navigation and will be more populated as time goes by (takes longer than I expected!)  It'll also serve as a nice timeline to see the progress I'm making, as the photos are captioned with the corresponding dates and locations.

I hope you'll check them out and continue to check back for more!