Humility - An Introspection

I felt it was very important to jot down for myself and incidentally share with others a deep realization on Humility that I gained based on introspecting my own feelings.

Because it is penned on 12^th December it is also an uncanny tribute to my beloved Superstar who is however an anti-thesis of my concept but then it is the tributes that are overflowing for him today that set me thinking on this subject...

I have often wondered why humility is associated only with great achievers. 

After all, not everyone is an achiever and not every achiever ends up embracing humility.

If that be the route to be humble then it automatically seems a far fetched trait to possess. 

Our mind automatically post pones being humble to a much later stage of life and makes us focused on show casing ourselves as achievers of something great first.

I think this notion needs to be totally turned on its head for  a more constructive co-existence with others in a society.

When we think of humility, great achievers like Shri APJ Kalam, Rajini, A R Rahman, MS Dhoni, Jonty Rhodes etc only come to mind. 

Simultaneously one starts believing that humility is therefore a successor of achievement.

Today while introspecting on my own life, I started thinking do I want to chase achievements or humility. 

After all being an achiever is not in everyone’s destiny but being humble ought to be in everyone’s control to choose to be.

At the top of my recall, resonated a comment by some famous personality who is supposed to have said about an adversary (I am unfortunately unable to recollect both of them), 

“He is surely humble but then he has a lot to be humble about”.

While this is a tongue in cheek tribute, I felt that this was closest to the notion of humility I was searching for.  

It automatically meant that humility is accessible to everyone whether they have something to boast about themselves or not.

So I dug a bit more into my mind to find out what is the best possible way to express humility even when there is nothing to boast of in the first place. 

That is when I realized that being judgmental is the biggest hurdle in not being able to treat the impostors of success and failure as one and the same.

Invariably we are all judgmental.

Either we judge others or worse we judge our own selves and that too constantly and funnily with or without our own knowledge. 

Even as we exchange pleasantries with others, a little voice in the head keeps saying something like “hey, I thought I am as good as him or her, how come he/she has achieved this much while I have not”, or “I have not achieved anything in my life so far. I have worked for 15 to 20 years and still have not saved enough to consider an early retirement”.

To stop being judgmental of others, we need to first of all understand that everyone’s journey is unique and more importantly a very lonely one.

Someone is your peer at work or a classmate in school by sheer co-incidence or by a concept of time-boxing your life into various buckets.

You need to train your mind into un-boxing your life from these buckets and make it a larger expanse.

What if you had never worked in that company or studied in that school. You would then be running the race with an entirely different set of individuals whom you never knew existed from Adam right?

Perhaps they are even lesser mortals than the ones you compared with and also tasting bigger achievements than them. How would you then feel?. Where will you stop?. 

Isn’t it high time then to realize that life is all about your lonely journey and what you did with your life is all that matters to yourself.

Now after that comes avoidance of being judgmental on yourself.

Consider this. Would you want to be an achiever or Would you want to be known as an achiever.

If you just want to be an achiever it means you can make the attempt without having to fear failure and also there is no limit on the number of attempts you would need. 

The moment you want to be known as an achiever you invite a whole set of pressure variables that make you judge yourself very critically.

If you are able to avoid being judgmental of others (success or failure) and if you are further able to avoid judging yourself, then you automatically become humble for I truly believe by now that the purest form of humility is being non judgmental.   

It makes us someone who radiates positive energy to anyone we come in contact with

1. If we come across a less privileged person, it helps us to empathize with him more
2. If we come across a more privileged person, it helps our stress levels by not adding kilo calories to false notions of measuring the size of our own achievements.

Happiness always appears elusive for it is more of an end point of an arduous journey. The ability to persevere that arduous journey comes from being humble.

The more our spoken word reflects or matches with the inner voice in the head the more the signs of progression in the journey to be humble.

The best way to live is by helping others. 

That is not an easy life to live for many of us chasing personal commitments (so in the spirit of this write up nothing judgmental about it), but at least we should live a life that is not an hindrance to one another.

Even if we radiate a thought of envy at other people’s status or position or achievement in life, we end up being a negative energy in their lives while simultaneously being wretched ourselves.

I personally realized through this self conversation that humility is therefore a starting point that is within the reach of everyone.  

No one needs a role model to get inspired into radiating humility. 

And it is this realization that made me create a blog after many years.

I just wanted to share this in the hope of inspiring others to think "If a guy next door can, so can I. Let me not wait to be an achiever to radiate this state of mind.".

Cheers,

Mahesh