Do you think anybody really wants to be arrogant?
Is there somebody out there who actually aspires to obnoxiousness?
I doubt it.
On the other hand, do you really want to be ‘humble’?
Do you think the average person pictures ‘humility’ as equating to ambition and a drive for success?
Or does the word ‘humble’ conjure an image of someone lacking presence and self-confidence, an easily manipulated wallflower shyly averting his gaze?
Let’s rethink this.
Torah wants us to live proactively and energetically. We are encouraged to vigorously engage the world and usher it to a meaningful place.
That same Torah guides us to be humble. How can these two attitudes co-exist in one person?
Humility doesn’t mean being a doormat. It means being honest with yourself, and seeing yourself for who you really are.
Authentic humility doesn’t deny – to yourself or others – your value, strengths and talents. That’s not called humility, it’s called [self-] deception.
Humility means being fully aware of your talents; it means total consciousness of your advantages in life – genetic, familial/societal or financial.
Humility is the attitude 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 skills and opportunities with which we’ve been endowed. We should recognize that each of these life-advantages comes with a responsibility. G-d grants us gifts for a purpose: we need to develop and utilize our ‘tools’, making them into accessories for meaningful living.
So we need to look at each of our gifts and recognize that gifts are just that: Something we’ve been given. Gifts aren’t accomplishments. They’re opportunities.
We should consider each of our gifts and ask: Am I doing this opportunity justice? Could I not be doing more to actualize it?
We should also recognize that people without our specific talents, our tools, have simply been dealt a different tool box. The gifted toolbox doesn’t make one a qualitatively better person, it’s what we’ve accomplished with our tools.
To a humble person, the real measure of life isn’t the hand we’ve each been dealt; it’s what we’re doing with it.
So humility is a sense of responsibility: I need to be who G-d created me to be. Humility is when I’m not competing against others, but against my own potential. Humility is a sense of always being conscious for new opportunities.
Now let’s get out there and be the best we can be. Humility demands no less.