Skip to main content

Humility

 

From New York Times

Weekend contemplation

“Don’t be so humble; you’re not that great,” Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel, once told somebody (whose humility was probably nothing more than obsequiousness which comes easily to politicians). Humility is not a common virtue. Really great people possess it because they are aware of their own limitations. One of the requisites of greatness is an acute sense of self-awareness.

The oracle of Delphi was once asked whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. The oracle asserted that Socrates was the wisest. Socrates who was present at the scene refused to acknowledge it and went on to do some research and find out wiser people. He spoke to many wise people and learnt that they were not as wise as they pretended to be. Socrates’s greatness lay in the fact that he acknowledged his ignorance when he did not have the required knowledge while the others claimed to know more than they really knew. Socrates possessed humility. Socrates was great enough to have such humility.

Great people can afford humility. Pride, the opposite of humility, is a self-defence mechanism. Pride is a cover-up for our drawbacks and limitations and insecurities. I was scared to accept my drawbacks and hence covered them up behind a façade that supposedly looked magnificent. But the magnificence was my imagination. To others the facade must have looked hideous which indeed it was.

Great people don’t require such facades. They don’t have insecurities to conceal. They have limitations and they accept them humbly. People like me who have more limitations than skills and are not able to accept the limitations need facades.

Today, as an aging man who has gone through the umpteen tortures that life bestows on people who put up hideous facades of self-defence, I have learnt humility or at least the importance of it. It is not easy to learn that. The facades persist, especially when you have to deal with those who were bent on hammering them down for various reasons.

Greatness is not a necessary prerequisite for humility. I have come across very many ordinary people who possess that great virtue. Such people are aware of their limitations and accept them as natural. They are not grumpy about destiny’s partiality to them. They don’t keep grudges for having less brains, or not being able to sing like the nightingale, or not being contemporary Shakespeares. They know what they are and they are okay with it. They go about doing their jobs without bothering much about themselves, in fact.

Yesh, that’s the point. Rick Warren said it: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Indeed, those possessing true humility might be considered truly great - it's a trait a few in power would do well to cultivate and not just give lip service! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's becoming harder to find humility. Too much insecurity, perhaps, making people aggressively self-important.

      Delete
  2. Wow. I love this post. Agree with every word you have said.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Call of Islamic State

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS).  Many of them are women.  The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report,  “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average,  but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families,  yet some converted to Islam a...

The Plague

When the world today is struggling with the pandemic of Covid-19, Albert Camus’s novel The Plague can offer some stimulating lessons. When a plague breaks out in the city of Oran, initially the political authorities fail to deal with it as a serious problem. The ordinary people also don’t view it as an epidemic that requires public action rather than as individual annoyances. The people of Oran are obsessed with their personal sufferings and inconveniences. Finally the authorities are forced to put Oran in quarantine. Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, delivers a sermon declaring the epidemic as God’s punishment for Oran’s sins. Months of suffering make people rise above their selfish notions and obsessions and join anti-plague efforts being carried out by people like Dr Rieux. Dr Rieux is an atheist but committed to service of humanity. He questions Father Paneloux’s religious views when a small boy is killed by the epidemic. The priest delivers another sermon on the necess...

Farewell to a Friend

This is a season of farewells for me.  I have lost count of the persons who have already left or are being hauled up before the firing line by the Orwellian Big Brother in the last quarter of the year.  The person, to whom we bid farewell today, however, had chosen to leave on his own.  He is going as the Principal of R K International School , Sarkaghat, Himachal Pradesh. Mr S K Sharma was a colleague and friend.  He belongs to the species of human beings whose company enriches you and whose departure creates a vacuum, notwithstanding the fact that Nature which abhors vacuum will fill it in its own unique ways.  Administration is an art for Mr Sharma, though he calls it a skill.  Management lessons, strategies and heuristics are only guidelines.  No one can manage people merely with the help of these guidelines.  People are not machines which can be controlled mechanically.  Machines work according to rules.  People do not d...

Jatayu: The Winged Warrior

Image by Gemini AI Jatayu is a vulture in Valmiki Ramayana. The choice of a vulture for a very noble mission on behalf of Rama is powerful poetic and moral decision. Vultures are scavengers, associated with death and decay. Yet Valmiki assigns to it one of the noblest tasks of sacrificing itself in defence of Sita. Your true worth lies in what you do, in your character, and not in your caste or even species. [In some versions, Jatayu is an eagle.] Jatayu is given a noble funeral after his death. Rama treats Jatayu like a noble kshatriya who sacrificed his life fighting for dharma against an evil force like Ravana. “You are blessed, O Jatayu!” Rama tells the dying bird. “Even in your last moments, you upheld dharma. You fought to save a woman in distress. Your sacrifice will not go in vain.” Jatayu sacrificed himself to save Sita from Ravana. He flew up into the clouds to stop Ravana’s flight with Sita. Jatayu was a friend of Dasharatha, Rama’s father. Now Rama calls him equal to ...