Do you think anybody wants to be arrogant? Is there somebody out there who actually aspires to haughtiness?
I doubt it. At the same time, do you really want to be ‘humble’? Does the very word conjure up an image of someone lacking presence and self-confidence, an easily manipulated wallflower shyly averting his gaze?
The Torah wants us to live energetically, actively engaging the world and bringing it to a meaningful place. How do we reconcile that with humility, if that means passivity and submissiveness?
Humility means being honest with yourself, and seeing yourself for who you really are.
Humility isn’t merely a self-effacing attitude, one that denies – to yourself or others – your value, strengths and talents. That’s not humility, it’s [self-] deception.
No, humility means being fully aware of your talents; it means total consciousness of your advantages in life – genetic, societal, financial etc.
Humility is the attitude with which you approach your gifts and talents.
We all need to look at ourselves and take honest stock of our G-d-given ‘toolbox’, the gifts with which we’ve been endowed. Then we need to recognize that each of those life-advantages comes with a responsibility. G-d grants us gifts for a purpose. We need to develop and utilize our gifts as ‘tools’, making them into accessories for accomplishing meaningful living.
We need to look at each of our strengths and ask: Am I doing it justice?
We also need to consider that people without our specific talents have simply been dealt a different tool box. That’s G-d’s business, not mine.
To a humble person, the real measure of life isn’t which tools we’ve each been dealt; it’s what we’re doing with them.
So humility is a sense of responsibility. We need to be who G-d created us to be. Humility means competing against our own potential, not against anyone else. Humility is a sense of always being conscious of new opportunities to be the best we can be.
Humility means authentic ambition for a life well lived.
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