The Humility of Pride

For a long time I was taught, and believed, that the greatest thing you could do is humble yourself before God. You had to make yourself low and humble so that all your worth came from God, not from yourself.

That belief carried into my atheism. I mean, God was gone, but the concept of humility was not. I thought that humbling myself was a good thing, a beautiful thing. So I tried to do that — saying I was nothing, focusing on the negative parts of myself, etc.

I’ve found that when I focus on the negative parts of myself, they tend to multiply. So I’m forcing myself to do something else. I’m forcing myself to focus on the positive parts of myself. And sometimes, when I do this, that guilty voice starts to creep in, telling me, “You’re getting too proud. You have to humble yourself. You’re not that great. This is wrong.”

So I fight that voice, as of late.

No, I’m not saying that I’m perfect. But if I’m going to be a better person, the key is not to look at the places I’m weak and bemoan them, but to look at the places I’m strong, find confidence in openly admitting to myself that I’m strong in them, and in the exuberance of that confidence become stronger in them.

It’s a complete paradigm shift.

And yeah, people will say that I don’t have a right to say see I’m strong in the things I’m good at. Sometimes they’re right, but sometimes they’re just trying to bring me down, to say that I’m deficient somehow, and to get me focus on my deficiencies. You know, those friends who are the first ones in lines to pile on you when you failed, and criticize or only begrudgingly applaud your successes? The ones who give advice, not to help you, but because they want to underline how you’re always doing or thinking something wrong? Before, I used to consider those voices. I guess a couple are good for blind spots. I thought these were the good friends, though, the ones who told it like it is — and a lot of it had to do with the way I was raised.

But maybe the best friends are the ones in your corner, the ones who genuinely believe in you, the ones who seek to uplift you with feedback instead of wear you down, the ones who encourage you when you’ve failed or tripped and are cheering you when you succeed. And maybe they give criticisms, but it’s always with a recognition of mutual respect for who you are, and your respect for who they are.

That’s not to say that people can’t criticize me. But it’s a paradigm shift. Where before I might have focused on the one or two dissenters among the crowd supporting me, recently I’ve been trying to focus on the support instead of the dissent.

This is not a way to stay stagnant, of course — it’s an exuberance. It’s a joy. It’s an excitement of “I’m good at this — I’m looking forward to doing this more!!!” And I haven’t really allowed myself to feel that over the past few years.

Maybe that’s why I run out of gas on some projects, too. I listen to the naysayers. If I listen to the people I help, the people who say “thank you,” the people I actually encourage, the people who believe in me because I believe in them, maybe I’ll not only have more staying power — maybe I’ll flourish.

In a way, there is something humbling about this viewpoint. There’s no God here to lift me up. It’s just me, and you, by ourselves, making our way through a vast and sometimes overwhelming universe.

It’s in the humility of realizing that we are on our own that we can start to embrace the ways we make life better for each other and contribute things of value to our mutual miniscule existences on this spinning ball of dust.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I just want to thank all 34 of my patrons who help me write on this blog. Y’all are awesome.