What humility is not

image generated with Bing and Dall-E3

Humility is a value that you either are humble or not.

Have you ever thought that if you have to think "I have to be humble, because if not people are going to ..." you are, in fact, not humble? Are you afraid / ashamed of not having the image of being humble? Did you notice how this is a distorted perception of what humility really is? Because when you are humble you aren't worried about being judged. If you have to think on how the others are perceiving your humbleness, then you are more worried about validation! The humble person does not seek validation! If you have to show how humble you are to earn respect from others. That's not humility!

Suppose that you are very rich and you want to promote yourself as humble. To do so you think on simplicity. A cheaper car, cheaper food, cheaper clothes. So on. There is a deep contradiction in this behavior. To show off does not blend well with humility. To be humble means to be humble. Not to think that you have to show off as being humble!

If you truly are humble you don't worry about how you compare to others. The humble one does not have to worry about being above or below others. The humble one respects oneself and does not depend on external validation. Humble people accept reality the way it is and see the value in things without judgements. They value what they are, what they have and do not feed #enviouness. They aren't ashamed of themselves and know that they aren't perfect. They know they have limits on how much they know, how much they can do and how far they can go.

To be humble is not to be poor! To be humble is not to play the victim! To be humble is not to blame everything and everyone! To be humble is not to resort to pure luck and bad luck to explain all things! To be humble is not to run away from problems! To be humble is not to have a chronic fear of failure or losses! Humility is not ingratitude! Humility is not to take everything on your own shoulders or to never entrust to others!

See how humility relates to fear, shame, rage, confidence, ego, pride, insecurity, sadness, envy and arrogance? Do you know what happens to people who lack humility? They are very easy to offend.

Extra comment: I asked about how good of a representation of humility that image was in reddit and somebody pointed to H.P. Lovecraft. The concept of "cosmic horror" is that every person is a small dot in comparison to the whole universe. The universe is dark terrifying because there is a lot that we don't know about it. It's a monster that can devour whoever dares to venture in it.

References (portuguese only):

• Humildade não é negar o próprio valor - Pedro Calabrez
• Bernardinho sobre humildade com Joel Jota - Joel Jota e Bernardinho
• Descubra o poder da humildade: como ela pode transformar sua vida - Daniel Martins de Barros

References (english)

• Chris Gardner and his life story, mainly the movie
• Other images with the idea of humility: https://www.deviantart.com/furostnova/gallery?q=humility