“Be like Bamboo. The higher you grow, the deeper you bow.”
Asian Proverb
As a martial arts lover, I have always been fascinated by Samurai culture and the idea of developing the mind and body together. The historical reality was obviously much messier than the romantic version we tend to inherit through books and films, but the idea that capability should be accompanied by humility has always resonated with me. We seem to live in rather narcissistic and entitled times, and when those behaviours go unchecked, they quickly start to feel normal. Humility keeps us grounded.
Today’s Challenges
1. Be on the lookout for humble behaviour in other people and compliment it when you see it. We all need a bit of encouragement, and noticing good qualities in somebody else is a kind and surprisingly rare thing to do.
2. Be careful not just to ACT humble. False modesty is everywhere. If I post a picture of my shiny new Range Rover on Instagram telling thousands of strangers how #humbled and #grateful I am, am I really being humble? Probably not. Humility and performative humility are not the same thing. Be careful of the humblebrag and think about how you communicate with the world. The easiest way to appear humble is, rather inconveniently, to actually become more humble.
3. Ask the big questions. Before bed tonight, spend a little time getting acquainted with some of them. I am a total fanboy of astronomy, cosmology and quantum physics myself. Not because I particularly want to feel small and insignificant — these are merely enjoyable side effects! — but because it is difficult to become too impressed with your own career, status, failures or successes when you start thinking seriously about the universe, time, consciousness and the extraordinary amount we still don’t understand.
Just don’t disappear so far down the rabbit hole that you emerge as a nihilist and decide nothing matters. I also recommend reading a little Albert Camus. He was a French-Algerian writer and philosopher and is probably the person most closely associated with Absurdism, a school of thought that resonates with me enormously. Very crudely, the absurd is the tension between our human desire for meaning and a universe that stubbornly refuses to explain itself.
Cheerful stuff.
Oddly, I find it reassuring.
4. Do things that are slightly beyond your grasp. Back on Day One, I asked you some fairly personal questions because honest reflection is part of humility. Living an athletic life, learning new skills and occasionally attempting things you are not very good at are wonderful ways of reminding yourself that you are not quite as magnificent as your ego would sometimes like you to believe.
Train hard. Learn things. Be a beginner. Get things wrong. Try again.
I am not a fan of perfectionism because perfectionism often stops people from doing interesting things. Confidence and self-esteem are not built purely by being brilliant at everything. In my experience, they are built just as much by discovering that you can fail, look stupid, learn something and still be perfectly fine afterwards.
A little birdy once told me that the universe keeps giving us the same lessons until we learn what we need to learn. I have absolutely no evidence that the universe operates this way, but I rather like the idea.
Either way, humility helps us listen.
What do you think?