It's hard to be humble...

I would like to preface this post by apologizing to Doll, who asked me 3 months ago if I would contribute to this topic and give my opinion on Humility. It should have been here sooner, but life intervened. My apologies also to my much more punctual fellow posters on this thread. But now, at last and without any further ado...


What is humility? That's no so easy a question to answer as one might think. If you ask one thousand people this question, I have no doubt you would get nearly as many answers. The reason for this is simple. Well...OK, it's actually NOT so simple. It is actually rather complex. Because we, as humans, are complex. I mean, sure, you can look to Webster or Oxford or even Dictionary.com for a definition, but that is just a scratch on the surface. All you will learn from any of those sources is simply what the WORD humility means. Defining words is easy. It's when you get down to what the concept of what the humility really IS that things get interesting; because it is so, so much more than just a word.

Humility and whether one does or does not have it, are shaped by so many different factors. Spirituality, up-bringing, environment, and the vast gamut of personal experiences, joys and traumas we all expeience as individuals throughout our lives. Which, for example, is why you: the reader, get all these fascinating little essays, rants and perspectives on Humility. Each on different from the next due to all of the factors listed above and more, but none wrong. And who knows, along the way you may discover or re-define what it actually means to you, and the role it - or it's absence - plays in your own life.

And so, all of that being said, humility to me is acceptance of yourself and your place in things with pride, while striving to be the best you you can become. And the real trick in this is to not cross that sometimes hair-thin line from pride into arrogance, which then blows humility all to shit until something happens to again teach you humility. It is, I think an on-going lesson to some degree in everyone's lives. In the legends of my faith and also in those of many other cultures, even the Gods themselves are not immune to the lessons of humility and arrogance. When looked at from that perspective, one realizes how truly powerful a force humility is. It is a place we must all tread with care, lest we fall and suffer the worst fate of all... Becoming self-important pompous douche bags!