The Orphaned Value
Humility is an oft-misunderstood value that that has become even more enigmatic with the rise of social media fame.
HUMILITY
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/83807/jewish/On-Humility.htm
Humility is the orphaned value of our age. Charles Dickens dealt it a mortal blow in his portrayal of the unctuous Uriah Heep, the man who kept saying, “I am the ‘umblest person going.” There is an irrepressible human urge for recognition. Today, an entire culture has emerged out of the various ways of “making a statement” to people we do not know, but who, we hope, will somehow notice us. You can trace an entire cultural transformation in the shift from renown to fame to celebrity to being famous for being famous. The creed of our age is, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” Humility, being humble, did not stand a chance.
FUN FACT
Studies prove that learning a new language makes you a more tolerant person. A new language opens you up to new cross-cultural understanding and new experiences that you may not have been willing to try before.
Humility — true humility — is one of the most expansive and life-enhancing of all values. It does not mean undervaluing yourself. It means valuing other people. It signals a certain openness to life and the willingness to be surprised and uplifted by goodness wherever one finds it. That is what the essence of humility is: the capacity to be open to something greater than oneself. False humility is the pretense that one is small. True humility is the consciousness of standing in the presence of everyday greatness.
Humility, then, is more than just a value: it is a form of perception, a language in which the “I” is silent so that I can hear the “Thou”, the unspoken call beneath human speech, the voice of otherness that calls me to redeem its loneliness with the touch of love. Humility is what opens us to the world.
And does it matter that it no longer fits the confines of our age? Some values may be out of fashion, but they are never out of date. The things that call attention to themselves are never interesting for long, which is why our attention span grows shorter by the year. Humility — the polar opposite of “advertisements for myself” — never fails to leave its afterglow. We know when we have been in the presence of someone who, in their humility, truly sees us. We feel affirmed, enlarged, and with good reason. For we have met someone who, by not taking himself or herself seriously at all, has shown us what it is to take, with utmost seriousness, that which is not I.
“True empathy is rooted in humility and the understanding that there are many people with as much to contribute in life as you.”
—ANAND MAHINDRA