Mere Christianity – C. S. Lewis (1952)
There are too many times when someone doesn’t do something just because his pride has taken a knocking, and as such misses out on such a lot.
Humiliation could be classed as one of the worst culprit. The notion of losing face, the sense, or perceived sense of loss of dignity or prestige within a social context can be something that some people can never overcome. We are all guilty, to different degrees of wanting to save face, to protect our established position as seen by others.
The notion of Face could be termed as a social standing a person effectively claims to hold with a given situation. It is a respectability afforded by the position attained personally or that which is furnished by others, but equally it can be something that is very personal and therefore maintaining face, holding on to one’s dignity amongst complete strangers is personally important.
This saving face, or pride can be judged as paramount to the integrity some people put on their whole lives. If lost, they often feel there is no going back, there is no way of re-establishing what they had before and therefore they back away from the situation and the people involved. Once something goes wrong to dent pride it is often easier not to return to where it happened, to not go back and have to face the potential ridicule, or the gossip, or the disapproval. This is when people are at risk of missing out, but by simply ignoring something, shutting off from a difficult or embarrassing situation, and hoping that the whole incident will just go away is often a harsher self-punishment that actually plucking up the courage to face it.