The Lion's Pride

Deep in the heart of Africa lived a pride of lions who ruled the plains of the Sahara with their strength and wisdom. The leader of this Pride was Jamal, a young fierce warrior. His father had been a wise and caring leader but sadly, had died a few months earlier. Jamal took his place as leader.
Being young and inexperienced, the young leader used his position to show off. Every day he would wake up before the sun and spend a couple hours looking at his reflection, making sure every hair of his mane was in place. Then he ran up the tallest mountain and just as the sun peeked up over the horizon, roared as loud as he could, announcing the start of a new day. All of the animals in the valley would wake up and bow down to their leader. After this ritual, Jamal would spend the rest of his day “patrolling his territory.” This could also be called showing off for the ladies. The new king needed a queen to help him run his kingdom, but he was having a hard time getting the attention of the girl he wanted.
Sierra was the most beautiful lioness in all of the land. With this beauty also came intelligence, and she knew just how proud and arrogant Jamal was. Because of this she refused to marry him. Each time that Jamal approached her with the question, she cut him off.
“Sierra, will you mar…?”
“No.” So much for love at first sight. With every rejection, Jamal got more and more frustrated. He couldn’t understand why Sierra didn’t want to marry him. After all, who wouldn’t want to be the queen alongside the handsomest, strongest, most influential lion of the pride? Finally, he got fed up. He went to Sierra.
“I don’t understand why you won’t marry me. I’m the king of the Pride! What more could you possibly want?” Sierra decided to take this opportunity to teach Jamal a lesson.
“In order to prove that you are strong enough to be my husband, I want you to fight another lion, and win. I don’t care who you fight, but you have to win by sundown.” As soon as Jamal heard this, he raced off to find somebody to fight. He chose the wimpiest, weakest lion he could find- Toby. Then he gathered all the animals to the center of the valley.
“Today I am going to win the love of my life with my awesome strength!” Jamal strutted around Toby in a circle, making a big show. However, in the past few months, the king hadn’t been building up his strength. Instead, he had been proudly preoccupied with his appearance. When Jamal tried to pounce on Toby, the smaller lion quickly leapt out of the way. This was the pattern of the fight for a good two hours, and Jamal began to get tired. Toby sensed that his opponent was nearing exhaustion, and at the right moment, jumped on him pinning him to the ground! Everyone was shocked that their leader had lost, but soon the crowd began to laugh.
“Look at Jamal now! For all his pride he sure isn’t very strong- even Toby can beat him!” Jamal was humiliated and hung his head as he walked back to his den. He realized that pride was causing all of the problems in his life. The next day he didn’t wake up hours before dawn, he didn’t run up the biggest mountain and roar, and he didn’t make all of the animals bow down to him. For days after that, Jamal swallowed his pride and simply did his job as king, making sure everyone was protected. Finally, after almost a year had gone by, Jamal got up the courage to ask Sierra to marry him and this time she said yes! As the two walked off into the sunset Jamal thought of the great lesson he learned.