When Pride is Wounded

Finding myself in Homer's ancient epic

Hello there!

I’ve been reading ‘The Iliad’ by Homer for the past month. One of the first things that Hardcore Literature talks about focusing on is Rage — The Rage of Achilles.

The story begins with Achilles’ rage over Agamemnon taking away his prize. And this is the first point to reflect on: the reasons why we feel anger. In the book, Achilles is angry because he believes he has fought hard to earn his prize. And while everybody else gets to keep theirs, his prize is taken away by Agamemnon.

And we must think about what this does to a person. What happens when something that is ours is taken away from us? It questions his position among the Greek warriors, which leads him to lash out at Agamemnon, and so goes the story.

Is Achilles’ anger justified? I think yes.

Why should only his prize be taken away, when he’s responsible for a lot of what the Greeks have had and enjoyed till now? Agamemnon has hit at his pride.

Now, thinking about this in my own life, I would say that I’ve myself felt fits of rage over things much smaller than what Achilles felt. Pride is quite literally the most common reason for feeling anger. When someone doesn’t treat me with respect, I get angry. When someone assumes the worst in me, I feel anger. It’s easy to feel angry when we believe that our lives are the best version of what we’re capable of, and someone else just comes along and questions it.

The only way to deal with it? To let go. But that’s tough, and I’m not capable of it. At least not right now.

The other kind of rage is with self-disappointment and regret. If I believe I can achieve something and fall short significantly, I find myself angry. I know what my capabilities are, and not being able to achieve them makes me feel disgusted with myself. It’s this sort of self-disappointment that is a lot more common. I’m quite often thinking — ‘Man! wish I had done that before.’ or something like ‘How am I not able to get this? ’.

And I guess to deal with this, I should accept that the path to achieving a lot of things is through trial and error and failure. The only thing that matters is that I keep going at it.

I don’t know if writing these things down is of help to me in any way. But I plan to continue writing down my thoughts after reading the classics.

Thanks for reading! :)