HUMILITY ISN’T TIMIDITY

Day 344 of 365 days

Since a young age, many of us have been taught the virtue of humility — and by learning to maintain it, we’ve probably experienced a lot of benefits. For starters, when we keep a modest view of ourselves, we tend to be more open to learning from the world around us. To a large extent, any effective personal development system relies heavily on humility for honest self-reflection. Yet, so many of us tend to confuse humility with timidity, which seems altogether different.

Humility is thinking of yourself less. It infers that you are considerate and regard others before yourself. You consciously acknowledge the strengths of others without undermining your strengths.
On the contrary, timidity is thinking less of yourself. You refuse to recognize your strengths and you consciously assume others to be better than you. You cower away from responsibilities, actions and living your dreams. You constantly think you can’t or that there are always people better than you for a particular task. Timidity is siblings with mediocrity and fear.

Timidity is comfortable with the ‘status quo’ (the present mess). Humility seeks to be better. Timidity will stay in the comfort zone for as long as possible. Humility seeks knowledge and will strive to learn and get better. Timidity says ‘I can’t do it! ‘Someone else should do it’ ‘I can’t take the risk’. Humility says ‘How can I be better at it?’ ‘Who do I need to help me with it?’ How do I learn to do it?’Timidity expresses laziness and fear! Humility expresses courage and trust!

YES, I agree that humble people are expected to respect people, give consideration to others and exercise a great deal of restraint. Because of these attributes, humility has often been misconstrued as passive involvement, unbridled acquiescence and obvious timidity. Such misconstruction has caused a dilution of the virtue of humility. Hence the value of humility has been lost on many people as if it is an attribute of weak people. On the contrary, true humility is a real strength. It is strength under the clothing of composure, circumspection and consideration.

Humility is almost a God-like word. A sense of awe. A sense of wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An understanding that there is something unique about the human drama versus the rest of life. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having the feeling that we’re part of the stars.