Humility! Tails on the Coin of Success.

Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation. – Saint Augustine

The combination, humble enthusiasm or perhaps enthusiastic humility is not found searching the internet. Ignored or condemned outside of religious tracts, the emphasis on assertiveness, self-esteem, and a certain kind of generous ego insures humility does not play well in today’s western world. Raised to be smart, successful and often aggressive the television shows I watched, as a child did not include humility except as certain kinds of humor. Yet, I also learned a certain problem with achievement. Getting straight A’s [or any task well done in retrospect] plus a buck twenty-five buys a cup of coffee and the daily paper.

Often patience and humility together disturbs our current fashion for everything to be bright, loud, practical and instantaneous. Impatient humility is not humble enthusiasm.

In looking for connections humility is labeled a virtue and there is no cross pollination with principles and values! How odd and yet principles and values missed enthusiasm as well. What does that say about the conviction with which we hold our principles and values?

Humility is not mild mannered meekness willing to roll over and play dead for everyone either.

Typically associated with modest behavior, putting others first and never giving or taking offense humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. However, not necessarily last either. It is not taking yourself too seriously while being charitable with others, especially with those you disagree. This is not easy to do in my view but worthy of discovering how to be. What attracts others and me is the calm courage required to accept all of life as it comes. Accepting tedious, often unglamorous tasks kindly is a skill worth learning! Always giving credit where due is a kind of graciousness, a kind of gratitude that we need more of in our lives and those around us. Humility has a quality of leadership without being in charge I want to learn how to emulate and promote.

The most difficult aspect is taking on despair, fear and uncertainty without intimidating or being intimidated. It is reverence for all of life and an honoring of commitments and ones word. Keeping and giving promises, large and small without claims or denials is a path worth following, worth practicing.

Humility is a virtue; a real value where one has an accurate, one could say exact, opinion of one’s self because one knows one’s self well. Do not be sad! If that appears the comparison is to some imaginary ideal designed to remove humility and install something else.

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance. – Saint Augustine

Fake it till you make it will not work here!

What may be the biggest issue with humility is what most people experience as lessons on the way. Humiliation does not teach humility!

Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just. ― Bernard of Clairvaux

There is common honoring of suffering too that attaches itself to perhaps a fake humility causing unattractiveness to the virtue. But, what is suffering to be used for you may ask?

We shall not find ‘the’ meaning or sense of suffering, because in and of itself it makes no sense at all, it is absurd… Only the attitude of the person who suffers counts…. When suffering comes into a person’s life, then it is not about seeking out the meaning of suffering. It is rather about looking to see whether it still be possible to give meaning to life in spite of the ‘non-sense’ which suffering causes. – Dominique Morin

There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart. – Saint Augustine

The perfection of humility is the knowledge of truth. – Bernard of Clairvaux

It is interpretation! It is self-examination without resorting to negativity about yourself and anyone else.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. – Robert Frost