You seriously, seriously need to reconsider a significant part of your worldview if you can easily think of the reasons one ought to be "proud" of such an effor

You seriously, seriously need to reconsider a significant part of your worldview if you can easily think of the reasons one ought to be "proud" of such an effort, but you can't think of the reasons one might be "embarrassed". Without knowing it, you've taken a weirdly extreme and limited perspective - and deprived yourself of anything remotely close to a complete understanding. I assume you're probably proud of your "optimism" or something here, but it's absolutely silly.