I realize that not a lot of people even know what this word can mean to them. So often humility is confused with humiliation. Humility is the state or quality of being humble. Only I can humble myself but others can humiliate me. Humility is about remaining and being teachable. Humility is finding joy in being of service to others like as in the case of Mother Teresa. Humility is giving the right to people to be wrong or to have their own opinion without interrupting their own evolution.
A humble person is the opposite of being a know-it-all and humility is the antonym to arrogance. Having humility, you choose to do the right thing instead of choosing or needing to be right. You drop your agenda and live with integrity. A humble person sees themselves truly with warts, scars and defects as well as with gifts, talents and a sense of purpose. The humble work on themselves by behaving into right action not just thinking about it. They understand it is an ego-deflating process.
Instead of a sense of entitlement or victimhood, the humble are grateful and helpful. They live forward but understand backward. They have walked the razor’s edge of self-indulgence vs. self-care and choose to swallow their pride in order to move forward without regurgitating the past.
To label yourself as humble is an oxymoron because the peaceful, the modest and the content do not rely on other’s opinions nor the world around them. They desire to seek and act according to a higher calling and have no dispute with other’s egos, nor their own.
The humble do not live with self-centered fear. They are not desperate to hold on to anything nor do they fear losing anything. All they are, is enough. They do not chase after anyone or anything nor do they fear failure. All that is, is more than enough. It is not that they don’t have a calling, it is that they achieve their calling by living it.
Your attitude determines your level of humility. The question “What can I learn from this?” helps you unfold another layer of wisdom, cloaked in humility. Instead of asking, “Why is the world treating me this way?”, it is more about “How am I treating the world around me today?”
As soon as I get out of self/ego, I get out of fear. When fear steps in, my faith in something divine, steps out. If F.E.A.R. is False Evidence Appearing Real and being humble is being real without fear, then humility is about seeing things as the way they really are, coming into acceptance (which does not mean approval) and comporting oneself, accordingly (and without taking any credit for it). This concept is beyond most people’s understanding yet is just but a willing, innermost, meditative search away.