Humility…
One day, in life’s hall of mirrors, I discovered that perhaps part of my life’s lesson is to learn humility.
What is humility?
As I looked into the mirror that life held before me, I realized that I am learning humility because I have often noticed how close pride has been within me.
When one of life’s lessons is humility, we may find ourselves in situations where we are put down by others. It is painful and heartbreaking when you are still a child and cannot understand the purpose of such experiences. It was only when I began working with my emotions through healing and writing that I realized I had also been learning an important lesson about myself.
Pride is a kind of armour we put on to protect ourselves from pain, rejection, shame, and feelings of helplessness.
Many people consider humility to be a virtue because it softens pride and self-centredness. When you are belittled with hurtful comments about your appearance, your intelligence, or your abilities, it is not easy not to swing to the opposite extreme and become angry, hurt, and bitter.
As a child, I was often told that I was ugly. For many years I simply believed it, and although I have worked deeply with that shadow, I still carry a small part of it within me.
Throughout my life, I have also received many other negative comments about my appearance and about who I was. As a result, I became deeply preoccupied with how others treated me.
It all felt terribly unfair. I believed I had done nothing to deserve it. I saw it as pure cruelty and even believed that those who behaved that way were creating negative karma that would one day return to them.
When your attention becomes focused on what others think of you, you also begin constantly judging yourself and others. You find yourself wondering what people are saying about you, how they see you, and whether you are being criticised. Life becomes an attempt to please others in the hope of avoiding more hurtful comments.
While I was working through the pain of my childhood and teenage years, I was completely absorbed in my own suffering. I was trapped in that pain and found it difficult to see life from anyone else’s perspective.
I struggled to forgive those who had hurt me and saw them as my enemies. They have never apologised for the way they treated me. Looking back, however, I sometimes wonder if part of the reason was that I was not so easy to break. I became what could be described as proud. I defended myself and often responded with great toughness.
It was only many years later that I realised that through those experiences I had not only come to know pain, but also the pride that had become the armour surrounding it.
Little by little, I came to understand that my pride was not strength at all—it was armour. Beneath that armour lived an insecurity I had tried to hide for many years.
One day, during a healing session, the word humility quietly came to me. It felt warm and gentle, and I sensed that it touched something deep within me.
Humility is not about making yourself smaller. It is about acknowledging both your strengths and your limitations. It is also about recognising that you can be wrong and that you can always learn from others. I know that I have many gifts, but they do not make me better than anyone else.
Humility has helped me develop compassion for others and to understand that no one is greater or less than another.
I believe that the soul chooses certain circumstances, and perhaps even a particular physical appearance, in order to learn specific life lessons. Perhaps I needed a reminder not to place myself above others because there were times when I could be proud and look down on people.
I did not become humble overnight. The people who have walked beside me throughout my life have gradually helped me see myself reflected in others, as though they were mirrors.
To me, humility is not about thinking less of myself. It is about accepting that it is perfectly all right to make mistakes. No one is perfect, and no one knows everything.
There is something deeply comforting about that realization.
