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What Is Humility?

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PERSONAL IDENTITY

Can we talk about . . .

humility.

Once when I was about eight, I saw this sentence written in an open space on a church bulletin.

The funny thing about humility is the second you think you have it, you don’t.

Obviously that sentence stayed with me. I revisit it often. I still see it. The original had been typed on the master sheet by a manual typewriter. As I reflect on the image, the sentence itself looks humble compared to what we look at now.

This morning, Karin and I talked about the meaning of humility, which started me thinking again.

I reflect on one idea every time I encounter that word humility It’s been the same since the day I first saw that sentence.

We get ourselves into weird shapes and strange configurations chasing after humility.

Humility is the recluse star of the virtues. It starts with the same H as halo.

What Humility Is Not

I can tell you what I know about humility. Then maybe you’ll tell me more. That would be useful, because the elusiveness of humility means we know more about what it is not than we do about what it is.

In fact, what humility is not is a good place to start. Humility is the absence of many things that we can do without.

Humility is not about deprivation. Humility is about more, not less. A humble heart gives more, has more room, sees more good, and is more generous.

Humility doesn’t make itself less. It doesn’t think of itself at all. So less cannot happen.

Humility does not bring itself down. It raises others up higher yet. A humble heart can hold up a chin. For a heart to do less would be to devalue everyone. Humility is about giving value, not taking it away.

Humility is not false. It doesn’t pretend to something it’s not. It doesn’t deny the truth about what is good. A star needs to shine fully bright to remain a star. A humble star knows that shining is what it does well and is generous with its light. Falsehoods in any form, are not humility. They are a denial of the truth, that’s something else.

What Is Humility?

Humility is without guile. It needs no plot, no plan. It has no needs at all.

Humility is not about me. It doesn’t make me bigger or smaller. It’s about everyone else. We don’t know when we have it, because when we look at ourselves, it is gone.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Change the World: Truth and Humility

Change the World: Truth and Humility

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Wait a Minute

changetheworld8

A few weeks ago I went to lunch with someone I had only met via email. Our relationship was at best tenuous. He had come on like gangbusters. I had made it clear I wasn’t going there.

Over time, we started over and ended up at the same table. We talked for over 2 hours and I found a person quite generous and charming, who knew what his passions were.

Since that time we’ve been able to do each other a favor and add a couple of mutual friends to the conversation. At one point, we talked about what happened when we first met and how I used to the same thing — come on too strongly and too much in my head. “Head and heart,” I told him, “when you have them together you are so charming. Let the world see you.”

I hadn’t thought much about that second conversation, until last night when I went visit a pair of friends for the holiday. While I was there one of them mentioned that the young man in question had called her. My firend said she was tired of his attitude and jwas about to hang the phone when he stopped and said, “Someone told me this isn’t the way to be. I’m sorry. How are you? What are you doing?”

My friend’s face softened noticeably as she related the story.

She said, “I was ready to hang up and then he said that. So I told him what I had been doing. We had a great conversation. I so enjoyed talking to him.” She was smiling.

What a star! What a charming man she met. He reached out and told her the truth about what he was feeling. He simply said, “I need to start again to let you see me.” Then he did.

He changed the world by his truth and humility.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: On and On to Learn

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I have a Plan

changetheworld8

We learn every day. Big and small things that happen are enough to change us. Each bit of knowledge we helps us frame our world view. That’s an exciting and profound reality of being alive.

Yet most of that learning is passive, a form of response. It comes to us. We don’t seek it out. We might miss it completely as it sits waiting, if we don’t STOP to take notice. When we do, we often need to give it some thought to make what we’ve learned useful, to translate it into a thought that makes sense.

Learning is fundamental to growing.

Growing is fundatmental to life.

Learning with intentionality, actually setting out with a purpose to learn, is the quest of a beginner’s mind. It stretches our thoughts, moves our hearts, and transcends our current existence. Walking into a sunrise with a thought of learning changes who we are by the time we walk out of the sunset that same day.

If I don’t plan my learning, it seems I keep learning the same things . . .

over and over, on and on . . .

on and on until I open my head and heart to learn.

If I don’t plan to learn, how can I grow deep enough to do my part?

What will you make it a point to learn to day?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Try One More Time

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Hey, Robert, How Can We Change the World?

One nice thing about writing here is that I have so many writer friends. This week I had a conversation with Robert Hruzek via email. He related a simple true story as an example of how we can change the world one person at a time.

It’s a story worth sharing. Here it is.

Try One More Time

Guest Writer: Robert Hruzek

changetheworld8

OK, how would you like to change the world? Seems like a somewhat daunting challenge, don’t you think? Just how do you go about making a difference in people’s lives?

Well, perhaps the best approach is… one person at a time.

In church the other day, my wife was sitting next to a teen-age girl that exhibited all the signs of NOT wanting to be there. I have no idea what the back story was, but she was definitely doing her best to appear as sullen and rebellious as possible, even going so far as to pretend to be asleep during the sermon.

There’s always a point in our Sunday service when folks are invited to stand and greet one another, and I wondered what would happen when my wife tried to say few words of greeting to her. Alas, the girl would have no part of it, choosing to simply stay seated with her arms crossed. Ah, well, I suppose it was worth a try.

That’s probably where I would have given up and moved on.

But my wife, who is not one to be put off, did the most amazing thing. After the service had ended, she went back over to the girl and told her, “You know, you have the most beautiful hair!”

I’m telling you, it was like the sunrise on a clear morning! The young woman looked up at her in surprise, then suddenly got a huge smile on her face. In fact, her countenance changed so much she literally looked like a different person.

Isn’t it amazing what a difference a few kind words can make? You can change the world… one person at a time.

by Robert Hruzek

Thank you, Robert, for a simple story on how to start.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

What If We’re Supposed to Be Happy?

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Consider this

From one of my all-time favorite books.

It’s the prologue, handwritten on lined paper. Each paragraph is numbered.

24. And hearing, the Master was glad, and gave thanks and came down from the hill top humming a little mechanic’s song. And when the throng pressed him with its woes, beseeching him to heal for it and learn for it and feed it nonstop from his understanding and to entertain it with his wonders he smiled upon the multitude and said pleastantly unto them, “I quit.”

25. For a moment the multitude was stricken dumb with astonishment.

26. And he said unto them, “If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?”

27. “Of course, Master!” cried the many. “It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!”

28. “No matter what those tortures, no matter how difficult the task?”

29. “Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked,” said they.

30. “And what would you do,” the Master said unto the multitude, “if God spoke directly to your face and said, ‘I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AL LONG AS YOU LIVE.’ What would you do then?” —Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Is it easier to be unhappy, downtrodden, beat-up and to have a low opinion of ourselves? What if we’re meant to enjoy the good things, our good friends, and to share without shame the talents that we have? Imagine the ones we haven’t explored.

We could have it all backwards. Ever thought about that?

If we admitted how good we are at doing things, how much more good could we get done?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.