Proverbial #6 : Pride goes before a fall/Pride leads to a fall

As a true African man, I love my customs and traditions in a positive way. I love to be associated with anything African. You can change how you think, your gender, facial look and physique but you can not change who you are. We always need to be true to ourselves at all time.

My proverb for today is a popular proverb in Nigeria. It is a Yoruba (a tribe in Nigeria) proverb that cautions us from thinking way beyond who we are. 

Yoruba: Ìgbéraga ni ìgbéniṣánlẹ̀/Ìgbéraga nii Siwaju Iparun

English: Pride goes before a fall/Pride leads to a fall

It is hard to say in totality that you know someone. If you have a friend that you have been so close with for so many years that people believe you guys are true friends, the reality of the word ‘true’ will show itself to you when you or your friend has money. The Yoruba believe that when someone does not have money, the person borrows another person character and makes it his own.

It is hard to judge who a person truly his without money or influence. For the Yoruba people, to know the true nature of an individual, give him money! Some how, money has ways of bringing out the true nature of an individual. A humble person right now is not humble until he/she has money and influence. That is when you will know the true color of the person.

It's a good thing to have money, to be brilliant - ‘know book’, and know ‘powerful’ people. But do not let it get into you. The moment you start feeling yourself or seeing yourself as someone who ‘has arrived’ - now successful or rich, that is when your supposed ‘downfall’ begins!

Some people are naturally pompous! You will sense it in their ways or life, the way they talk and act in the society. These people are full of themselves and have no regard for anybody. They are always seeing other people from the bottom so they assume they are above every living being. For some, it is learned. That is, they learn how to be pompous in order to feel among. For some, it came out because they now have ‘little change’ (money).

We need to always learn be humble! Humility pays! Pride will always lead us to trouble. We need to understand that whatever position or situation we find ourselves today, some people have been in that situation and position in the past and nothings says yours will be permanent because change is constant.

We should not be humble because we have no money or influence but be humble at all time. You must stay true to yourself when you do not have money and when you do. Your own success may be what another person is facing as his downfall somewhere. You cannot have it all because no human is self-sufficient.

Thanks for reading. Your boy @smyle the philosopher.