Humility

One of the hardest words to define. We all throw this word around but do we really know what it means?
When we think of a humble person we tend to imagine a farmer in ragged clothes or a good-hearted village grandmother. However, humility is not necessarily restrained to levels of money or power. We all have met a humble yet wealthy businesswoman and a not so humble man struggling with financial woes. Although we can easily tell whether they are humble or not, it is hard for us to define what exactly makes them humble or not so humble.

The key to explaining humility lays in examining pride; the opposite of humility. Being humble entails not feeding the beast of pride that dwells within us. We can define pride as the love for one’s own ego and if cultivated, pride can become the castle where our ego takes refuge. Humility on the other hand is the destroyer of any self-defense mechanism based on pride to protect our ego.

In our everyday lives we are exposed to situations where pride seems to be an easy way to solve any problem, particularly emotional ones. Nevertheless, if we continue to take refuge in pride we will make our general situation worse, as pride will only confuse us further. There is no doubt that pride can be cultivated, but so can humility.

In the back of our minds we are aware of what specific situation we use to feed the beast of pride. Little by little we can start to develop the habit of doing what’s right and not what satisfies our beast of pride. This is the cultivation of humility.